Grand Old Thread: League of Legends!

[Cheerilee]

Can you imagine a midlaner that has ranged poke and cc.

Rumble's ultimate has to be leveraged against other mid ultimates in addition to his roam + team fight potential around level 6 - mid game. Mid lane favors champions that benefit the most from having a level six powerspike faster than anyone else on the enemy team. Also having the fastest wave should give them a comparatively higher gold advantage than the other members on the enemy team. Against a typical AP midlaner I don't see how Rumble can snowball when he depends on closing the gap without having a gap closer or hard cc & doesn't really have anything to stop being hard cc'd in order to stop him from advancing. He pretty much just shoves wave then roams and hopes someone is being stupid. Which isn't too hard, just not reliable.

Also I have legit gone from, "I can carry on any role except ADC" to "I can carry only on Ashe ADC." FML.

 

[Cheerilee]

As far as the Oriana pick goes, like I said, our Yasuo was a troll. In champ select, he asked for support. He waited until Oriana locked in, and then suddenly went Yasuo and called mid, and refused to budge on that. You also said "Someone should have told Yasuo to build bruiser." Again, like I said, he was a troll. He refused to communicate with the team, went off on his own a lot, and a lot of times would purposely go into the enemy jungle, find the enemy team, and just stand there and let them kill him. Again, there's really not much you can do to with a game when you have someone who is purposely sabotaging the game.

About that Yasuo:

 

[Espy Rose]

RIP.

 

[Pikaville]

Best runes EUW.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I find it more weird that somebody is level 30 and doesn't have any runes.
Take priority for runes over champs mang.

 

[Espy Rose]

Don't need runes if you're good.

 

[Pikaville]

But you do if like me, almost always try to outplay my lane opponent Lv 2-3. Also if you are jungling with anyone that isn't Nunu/WW/Fiddle/Trundle.

 

[EnigmaSSB]

I used to be waaaaay to into League. I did some work with Leaguepedia (and subsequently through Curse as it was a joint project), wanted to be a caster, etc. Game soaked up way too much of my time lol. Weird thing is, right now is the PERFECT meta for me, as I was always a guy that excelled at tanks in the top lane, and I have lost my interest in the game. Maybe it was getting really into Smash, or maybe I just burned myself out. I still like to follow the game at the competitive level, and I still think I'd make a great coach for a team, but actually playing the game is a droll for me now. Ekko doesn't interest me at all, and solo queue has never been my thing (always worked better in arranged 5 settings). It's kinda sad, since I have spent so much time and dedicated a large part of my life to it. Maybe I'll get the drive to go back after a little while. Probably end up playing near the season end to get my Diamond rewards for sure ;p

 

[teluoborg]

I find it more weird that somebody is level 30 and doesn't have any runes.
Take priority for runes over champs mang.

That's the problem with runes, if you don't have a friend to educate you and tell you to have 12k IP ready by the time you hit 21 then nobody will.
Especially now that you win so little IP per match (I remember the times when you got 250 IP for a normal match, 400 with the first win of the day), I don't know how new players can get both champs and runes by level 30 other than cashing in on rito points.

 

[Sinister Slush]

The sad reality is you gotta dump another hundred or so hours if you want good relevant runes and at least 10 champs.

 

[Cheerilee]

Tbh Team Builder mode alleviates a lot of issues with having insufficient rune pages since you already know what role and what champion you're going to be using in the game. By the time I hit 20, I used no IP but only had roughly enough to buy a page and a half.

 

[EnigmaSSB]

I have everything in the game so it's not like it's relevant for me lol. I basically just saved all of my IP until I hit level 30 and bought a full page of runes as well as a couple champions I enjoyed. This was long before you couldn't play free champions in ranked so I never had a problem with that aspect. I know too many people that have wasted IP on the low level runes. Nowadays it's definitely more annoying, especially with the lower IP gains per match as pointed out already. Team builder helps alleviate the pain of buying runes, because you can get away with only buying runes you know you're going to need, but the good thing is a lot of runes are used across multiple roles and characters.

 

[Soft Serve]

This new patch is kinda dumb. Riot should just let akali die tbh, stop buffing her ult.

Also Cass and karma nerfs (karma loses a rediculous amount of damage options for having more ults up late game, a longer empowered snare, and a different mega shield) while LB runs around freely still.

 

[Cheerilee]

I find it more weird that somebody is level 30 and doesn't have any runes. Take priority for runes over champs mang.

So much untapped power.

 

[Dre89]

This new patch is kinda dumb. Riot should just let akali die tbh, stop buffing her ult.

Also Cass and karma nerfs (karma loses a rediculous amount of damage options for having more ults up late game, a longer empowered snare, and a different mega shield) while LB runs around freely still.

Dont get why they're nerfing mages when tanks are borderline broken right now. Tank meta is the worst class-based meta there is. At least mages, assasins and ADCs take skill to carry on. They also have counterplay via CC and burst regardless of how fed they are. Cinderhulk meta is stupid because tanks build full tank, take no damage, then oneshot you and don't have to care about CC. The fact they get rewarded offensively for building defensively makes their builds super gold-efficient too.

 

[Sinister Slush]

They're nerfing tanks too, just not hard enough. Naut Urgot gnar irelia nerfs when?

 

[Dre89]

I tanked my MMR trying to learn Zed and Bard, so now my MMR is Bronze and I'm like 12 games negative because its harder to carry in Bronze than Silver. So if I tryhard and manage to get my W-L back to even does that mean my MMR would be Silver again and I'll be getting like 20+ LP gains? Is that how it works?

 

[Cheerilee]

I was reading an article awhile back that someone was able to extract a lot of match information from the Riot API and use it to figure out which team compositions had the highest win ratios back in Season 4. The pattern that had the strongest correlation was that teams that dedicated two units which were classified as tanks had the highest correlation to winning, however having any more or less than two tanks was not as beneficial. Every other division was most beneficial with only one champion in each of the respective classes being picked in the 5-man team.

Dont get why they're nerfing mages when tanks are borderline broken right now. Tank meta is the worst class-based meta there is. At least mages, assasins and ADCs take skill to carry on. They also have counterplay via CC and burst regardless of how fed they are. Cinderhulk meta is stupid because tanks build full tank, take no damage, then oneshot you and don't have to care about CC. The fact they get rewarded offensively for building defensively makes their builds super gold-efficient too.

Spoiler

@ Sinister Slush already mentioned that they did give nerfs to tanks i.e Gragas, Sejuani, and Leona this patch. Leona and Gragas both having hit box reduction on their gap closers and Sejuani having a %hp based damage reduction on her W. I think that implementing some nerfs on Cassiopeia was warranted considering the fact that she is a pretty dangerous off-tank in the mid-lane position in the sense that she can take some harass from tanks in a team fight and still be able to zone the back line because of her AoE DoT damage and the health bonus she gets from items like Haunting Guise, Rylai's, and the mid-late game shield active bonus from Seraph's Embrace. Based on her strong performance at MSI I was surprised she wasn't nerfed in Patch 5.9 following the event:

Spoiler

I think that tank meta is a healthy meta change considering how much people were complaining that League of Legends was moving towards a "mobility creep" type of dilemma or a "League of gapclosers" type of problem where highly mobile champions with high burst and having instances of having no hit box were able to start snowballing very easily. Introducing more options to tanks like Righteous Glory was a positive change for tanks, however it still required tanks to work hard to coordinate with their teammates in order to maximize the benefits of the item or were solely used as a late game type of chase mechanic to finish a caught out player. Introducing Cinderhulk added incentive for people to play tanks since it rewarded tanks for doing their job properly and taking aggro on enemies who shouldn't be giving them aggro.

Counterplay has been developing around the "tank meta." The reworked Ashe is probably the best example as she lost a lot of her initial crit damage and immense slow appeal in exchange for offering more utility in team fights and objective control. Ashe works so well in the tank meta precisely because her kiting potential is far more effective against immobile champions without blink oriented gap closers since she can apply autos + W + R as needed in order to peel for herself. In team fights where tanks excel, she gains added benefit by being able to proc her Q on one array making her incredibly useful in punishing bad positioning. She is currently being spammed in low elo due to her skill cap being greatly reduced by her Q toggle essentially being tied into every auto being mana-less.

Similar champions that are able to kite tanks are Jinx who can lay down chompers and apply her W as needed in order to zone out tanks from the rest of their team. @ Sinister Slush mentioned champions like Lucian and Kalista being strong for their ability to deal damage and having the ability to kite. I consider Kalista to benefit from her synergy with Ruunan's as she is able to apply AoE DPS when she is able to deal damage to tanks and their back line simultaneously. On the other end of the spectrum some people just pick Urgot as an ADC because he can build tanky (for an ADC), has pseudo-tankiness from his passive and W (ultimate), and provides utility enabling his team to take less damage-deal more damage-displace a badly positioned enemy.

I'm not sure how a tank building defensively can one-shot you honestly if they are only building defensive items. Or how a tank can both ignore cc and take no damage simultaneously. Essentially you're making Cinderhulk to be the equivalent of a tank oriented DFG when it offers far more counterplay than DFG offered on either assassins or magicians. In addition, tanks are most efficient when they operate in team fights which still makes them susceptible to aggressive split pushing, champions with good wave clear, and champions that have high mobility/escape capabilities. With the only strong counter consideration being Sion that comes to mind at the moment.

The problem isn't that tank meta is overpowered, but that team fight strategy is too linear in League of Legends as it comes down to a group mid and fight it out mentality which would benefit having someone like a Sejuani or Amumu with the Juggernaut Jungler item considerably. However, alternative compositions centered around obtaining quick objectives i.e. Sivir + Lulu + Yi/Udyr are still incredibly effective. The issue with tank meta isn't so much a lack of counterplay as people insinuate with tanky building, but the inability of the community to adopt new forms of thinking when it comes to teamfighting and strategy.

 

[Z'zgashi]

I used to be waaaaay to into League. I did some work with Leaguepedia (and subsequently through Curse as it was a joint project), wanted to be a caster, etc. Game soaked up way too much of my time lol. Weird thing is, right now is the PERFECT meta for me, as I was always a guy that excelled at tanks in the top lane, and I have lost my interest in the game. Maybe it was getting really into Smash, or maybe I just burned myself out. I still like to follow the game at the competitive level, and I still think I'd make a great coach for a team, but actually playing the game is a droll for me now. Ekko doesn't interest me at all, and solo queue has never been my thing (always worked better in arranged 5 settings). It's kinda sad, since I have spent so much time and dedicated a large part of my life to it. Maybe I'll get the drive to go back after a little while. Probably end up playing near the season end to get my Diamond rewards for sure ;p

If you're anything like me, you get burnt out and just need to quit playing cold turkey for a couple months and then something will eventually bring you back in again but with a newfound fiery passion. Happened for me with Smash (stopped playing completely for like 6+ months and I played Playstation Allstars instead lmao) and then with LoL a while back for about 4 months where I played Heroes of the Storm instead.

 

[Sinister Slush]

You forgot Rek'sai health nerf.
It's basically because she has free sustain from fury and the fact she can come out of jungle with both full health either be level 4 or close to level 4 while having both pots still.
Now if she wants to do that, she basically has to do the scuttle crab for free fury and get the health regen.

Kalista nerfs are actually very noticeable and with the jump backwards being less the hurricane route is actually weaker and not worth going to anymore Bf > greaves > BT now, she's seeing less and less play in favor of sivir being a more contested pick while Ezreal and Vayne is slowly coming back in the bot lane (not mid for ez). Jinx nerfs are gonna make her fall off the table too, the AS change is a pretty big hit and gonna be most noticeable levels 7-11.
Though with the loss of Jinx and Kalista kinda (they'll still see play, but Sivir and Lucian prolly more contested picks whenever summer split does 5.10.) Ashe is back into the picture. Hopefully twitch comes up too with the bork changes and constant lane swaps happen.

As for Cass nerfs, it was mostly because she was rewarded for spamming twin fang and also having free health sustain as well while getting that 3% mana back. Was too healthy in lane, even stronger in fights where she could kite all day. Was ridiculous, still think cass needed more nerfs.
Even then there's still mid laners that can just do free damage and never be in any danger unless some CC is thrown onto them (hello koggles and LB)

 

[Dre89]

I was reading an article awhile back that someone was able to extract a lot of match information from the Riot API and use it to figure out which team compositions had the highest win ratios back in Season 4. The pattern that had the strongest correlation was that teams that dedicated two units which were classified as tanks had the highest correlation to winning, however having any more or less than two tanks was not as beneficial. Every other division was most beneficial with only one champion in each of the respective classes being picked in the 5-man team.

Spoiler

@ Sinister Slush already mentioned that they did give nerfs to tanks i.e Gragas, Sejuani, and Leona this patch. Leona and Gragas both having hit box reduction on their gap closers and Sejuani having a %hp based damage reduction on her W. I think that implementing some nerfs on Cassiopeia was warranted considering the fact that she is a pretty dangerous off-tank in the mid-lane position in the sense that she can take some harass from tanks in a team fight and still be able to zone the back line because of her AoE DoT damage and the health bonus she gets from items like Haunting Guise, Rylai's, and the mid-late game shield active bonus from Seraph's Embrace. Based on her strong performance at MSI I was surprised she wasn't nerfed in Patch 5.9 following the event:

Spoiler

I think that tank meta is a healthy meta change considering how much people were complaining that League of Legends was moving towards a "mobility creep" type of dilemma or a "League of gapclosers" type of problem where highly mobile champions with high burst and having instances of having no hit box were able to start snowballing very easily. Introducing more options to tanks like Righteous Glory was a positive change for tanks, however it still required tanks to work hard to coordinate with their teammates in order to maximize the benefits of the item or were solely used as a late game type of chase mechanic to finish a caught out player. Introducing Cinderhulk added incentive for people to play tanks since it rewarded tanks for doing their job properly and taking aggro on enemies who shouldn't be giving them aggro.

Counterplay has been developing around the "tank meta." The reworked Ashe is probably the best example as she lost a lot of her initial crit damage and immense slow appeal in exchange for offering more utility in team fights and objective control. Ashe works so well in the tank meta precisely because her kiting potential is far more effective against immobile champions without blink oriented gap closers since she can apply autos + W + R as needed in order to peel for herself. In team fights where tanks excel, she gains added benefit by being able to proc her Q on one array making her incredibly useful in punishing bad positioning. She is currently being spammed in low elo due to her skill cap being greatly reduced by her Q toggle essentially being tied into every auto being mana-less.

Similar champions that are able to kite tanks are Jinx who can lay down chompers and apply her W as needed in order to zone out tanks from the rest of their team. @ Sinister Slush mentioned champions like Lucian and Kalista being strong for their ability to deal damage and having the ability to kite. I consider Kalista to benefit from her synergy with Ruunan's as she is able to apply AoE DPS when she is able to deal damage to tanks and their back line simultaneously. On the other end of the spectrum some people just pick Urgot as an ADC because he can build tanky (for an ADC), has pseudo-tankiness from his passive and W (ultimate), and provides utility enabling his team to take less damage-deal more damage-displace a badly positioned enemy.

I'm not sure how a tank building defensively can one-shot you honestly if they are only building defensive items. Or how a tank can both ignore cc and take no damage simultaneously. Essentially you're making Cinderhulk to be the equivalent of a tank oriented DFG when it offers far more counterplay than DFG offered on either assassins or magicians. In addition, tanks are most efficient when they operate in team fights which still makes them susceptible to aggressive split pushing, champions with good wave clear, and champions that have high mobility/escape capabilities. With the only strong counter consideration being Sion that comes to mind at the moment.

The problem isn't that tank meta is overpowered, but that team fight strategy is too linear in League of Legends as it comes down to a group mid and fight it out mentality which would benefit having someone like a Sejuani or Amumu with the Juggernaut Jungler item considerably. However, alternative compositions centered around obtaining quick objectives i.e. Sivir + Lulu + Yi/Udyr are still incredibly effective. The issue with tank meta isn't so much a lack of counterplay as people insinuate with tanky building, but the inability of the community to adopt new forms of thinking when it comes to teamfighting and strategy.

Champs like Voli and Gragas can build full-tank and oneshot squishies. I remember a game where my Challenger level mate had 10 kills on Vlad and got outdamaged by a full tank Voli with 10 kills as well.

 

[EnigmaSSB]

If you're anything like me, you get burnt out and just need to quit playing cold turkey for a couple months and then something will eventually bring you back in again but with a newfound fiery passion. Happened for me with Smash (stopped playing completely for like 6+ months and I played Playstation Allstars instead lmao) and then with LoL a while back for about 4 months where I played Heroes of the Storm instead.

Yeah this happened to me about a year and a half ago. I haven't touched the game itself in maybe a month or two now. Working in a video game themed restaurant we play a lot of streams and I follow the competitive scene a bit as it WAS a huge passion of mine. I think I don't have the juice to go with LoL AND Smash, especially since I'm trying to pick Melee back up as well, and Smash was definitely the game I could do without. I don't really play much with friends anymore, and I preferred arranged teams more than solo queue, and near the end all I really had was playing solo. Plus I have to play the Witcher 3 ;p

 

[Sinister Slush]

Funny enough another AD mid laner that's been seeing play is Varus.
Speak of the devil, Najin banned varus against SKT right this very second lol.

 

[Shaya]

Irelia needs to get nerfed?

Did she ever actually get buffed or is this the nerf cycle at it's finest?

 

[Sinister Slush]

She's incredibly strong in solo queue mostly, not so much Pro player of course. With the Riven nerfs, she's now basically the new Riven of facerolling her keys to 1v3 everyone.
If you get the chance to watch Sneaky, just about every single stream has him and his team getting absolutely ***** by Irelia.

 

[teluoborg]

Champs like Voli and Gragas can build full-tank and oneshot squishies. I remember a game where my Challenger level mate had 10 kills on Vlad and got outdamaged by a full tank Voli with 10 kills as well.

Let me guess : your friend was top while the volibear was jungle ?

Tank meta is fine, it means assassins have to choose their targets before facerolling. What needed to be nerfed has been nerfed (except maybe for Gragas and Mao who for some reason have kept their 10+% max health damage spell) and soon you'll see other things in the jungle.

 

[Cheerilee]

For me personally, I think Maokai as he is currently is justified. I've experimented with him in bot games to see how my camp clear is and to be honest I've run out of mana so many times. You really need to be judicious when you use him and I feel that if you do excel as a Maokai in how you budget your mana and expend your mana resources on providing utility for your laners in ganks, you could have done it even easier running an assassin or a do it yourself jungler that can secure kills on their own. The problem with Solo-Q is that you don't want to be a utility jungler, it's literally the most frustrating thing especially when your laners completely fail to follow through and then try to help out when the enemy is low or when they discover that you are tanky enough not to die. The distrust and selfish element in Solo-Q is just too aggravating to play a Maokai and although he has great cooldowns that are really low, it's pointless if you don't have cooperative laners. If you do have cooperative laners then you don't even need to run a Maokai in order to have won. That's how I honestly feel about him having tried him out in around 5-10 games.

 

[Cheerilee]

Champs like Voli and Gragas can build full-tank and oneshot squishies. I remember a game where my Challenger level mate had 10 kills on Vlad and got outdamaged by a full tank Voli with 10 kills as well.

This is what you decided to remember from the game? A Challenger Vladimir 1 v. 1'ing a Volibear?

 

[Dre89]

This is what you decided to remember from the game? A Challenger Vladimir 1 v. 1'ing a Volibear?

Not 1v1ing

The full tank Voli did more damage to champs than a Challenger level Vlad with basically the same gold.

 

[Soft Serve]

Not 1v1ing

The full tank Voli did more damage to champs than a Challenger level Vlad with basically the same gold.

this is leaving out a lot of information. How long did the game go? Did voli snowball early?

It's not far fetched to say a tank that rocks the early/midgame that snowballed early out dmged a late game carry that needs lvl 9 and an item or two to be effective. Junglers have more chances to do dmg early anyway if playing aggressive compared to a passive top lane

Voli is good right now but he gets kites so hard. If other tanks keep getting nerfed he might become fotm though, stacking hp is rediculous for his work damage, and cinderhulk and righteous Glory are both amazing for him.

 

[Cheerilee]

I am curious why someone would even do a damage comparison when they both act in different capacities. Vlad being more AoE and DoT oriented with his ultimate and E whereas Volibear being single target damage with initiation and upfront damage on units. But a spirit visage and a banshee or even a locket passive can shut down a lot of DoT damage like Vlad or even cinderhulk passive and with 6000 gold a lot depends on itemization.

 

[Dre89]

I have no idea how to trade as a poke supp in bot lane when your not duo with the ADC. As Bard I basically just wait until I have a meep and Spelltheif proc and Q auto them. But I don't know how you're supposed to do it when you can't coordinate trades with your ADC.

I am curious why someone would even do a damage comparison when they both act in different capacities. Vlad being more AoE and DoT oriented with his ultimate and E whereas Volibear being single target damage with initiation and upfront damage on units. But a spirit visage and a banshee or even a locket passive can shut down a lot of DoT damage like Vlad or even cinderhulk passive and with 6000 gold a lot depends on itemization.

Voli does tons of AoE damage early-mid with his ult.

this is leaving out a lot of information. How long did the game go? Did voli snowball early?

It's not far fetched to say a tank that rocks the early/midgame that snowballed early out dmged a late game carry that needs lvl 9 and an item or two to be effective. Junglers have more chances to do dmg early anyway if playing aggressive compared to a passive top lane

Voli is good right now but he gets kites so hard. If other tanks keep getting nerfed he might become fotm though, stacking hp is rediculous for his work damage, and cinderhulk and righteous Glory are both amazing for him.

Well they both ended up with 10 kills. Don't remember how long the game went but I remember my mate and I both being really surprised he got outdamaged.

Voli is kiteable head on but if he flanks it's a lot harder and he'll still do his job of forcing a lot of CDs. Obviously you need to time the flank with engage from another angle but still

 

[Soft Serve]

I have no idea how to trade as a poke supp in bot lane when your not duo with the ADC. As Bard I basically just wait until I have a meep and Spelltheif proc and Q auto them. But I don't know how you're supposed to do it when you can't coordinate trades with your ADC.

I just play Nami and watch the wave, see when my advice can trade at a time that they won't miss cs and the opponent will, then auto the opponent and e myself while the projectile is in the air. it's also a lot easier to be a support with a dmg buff and lane with a poke adc. When the jinx switches to rockets in a situation where she's not pushing lane, I just e her and follow up myself. Janna sheilding varus changing q, or lucI mid q are other easy examples, although all of these require competent adcs.

You could always just say in chat that pings behind/on the champ means you want to poke, communicate intentions on the way to lane/leashing

 

[KRDsonic]

Use pings. Physically tell your ADC at the beginning of the game what your playstyle is so they know what to look for and do in situations. Almost every adc will follow up when they see you go in to poke. If you use someone who actually does a lot of poke damage, like Sona, then eventually your ADC will realize "Hey, the enemy bot lane is at pretty low health. I'll start going after them instead of spending 100% of my time farming."

Even if you are playing a poke support and your ADC doesn't follow up, you can still do trades like you would in any other lane. Position yourself so that you can damage them more than they can damage you back. Wait until their adc or support uses a key ability and then go in to poke while it's on cooldown, etc.

 

[Dre89]

I feel like the Rumble curse from my main account where I lose every game I get fed in and win the odd game that I feed in has transferred to Zed on my smurf

Does anyone else have champ specific trends or is that just me

 

[Player-3]

yeah, i always win on every champ i play

idk why lol

 

[Cheerilee]

yeah, i always win on every champ i play idk why lol

 

[Dre89]

yeah, i always win on every champ i play

idk why lol

i must be immune to that curse

funnily enough just after i mentioned the curse i finally had a zed game where i got fed and won

perhaps the curse has been lifted

 

[Cheerilee]

@ Dre89

 

[Sinister Slush]

Oh it's Oceania? No wonder I can't find him, is that his infamous zed page?