League of Legends - F2P MOBA (like DOTA) part 2

[ImpulsE69]

We played a ranked team with Classick from on it Riot last night. Maleficus made sure to bitch him out about the horror of the current state of top lane. So when they overhaul it and fix everything just know to thank Maleficus.

How will it get better?

Just think about a year from now when there are 50+ more chars to choose from, and your measly 3 bans per team mean even less than they do now? I seriously think normals are a truer test of skill lol. I say this because A. You and everyone else can play any character (no bans), B. You can have multiple of the same OP chars in a game. Troll ratio is probably the same - but non meta is not as frowned upon which leads to varied game play, vs the snorefest that ranked is becoming.



Ban everyone. It's the only way to be sure.

 

[Firsttime]

Reverting the jungle changes, nerfing most tops and fixing GP/10 would do a lot to fix it.

Top gets camped now by jungles and the amount of mobility and durability required to survive top mean that pretty much in order to lane top the champ has to be broke. See: Jayce, Shen, Irelia, who I believe would be 3 of the more popular current tops.

If they could change the game so that the jungle played less of a role in winning and loosing the lane and whether you won or lost relied on outplaying your opponent instead, a lot would be fixed. There is currently too much incentive for jungles to sit in lane and camp people. GP/10 have basically turned them into a secondary support with tankiness and CC. It's pretty lame and has hurt the flexibility of the lanes a lot imo. The fact that pro teams in order to counter it have started to send 2 heroes top to lane the opponent top should say something about what it can take to shut some of those champs down.

Hopefully for season 3 they'll do something to shake this up. Give supports some different source of income and remove GP/10, make jungle creeps worth more. That would do a lot on its own.

Then they don't have to release champs who are insanely powerful kit wise and a nightmare to balance like Jayce with his 10,000,000 tons of utility and damage.

As for normals. Anyone who's played with me knows I like them.

 

[Hacp]

Reverting the jungle changes, nerfing most tops and fixing GP/10 would do a lot to fix it.

Top gets camped now by jungles and the amount of mobility and durability required to survive top mean that pretty much in order to lane top the champ has to be broke. See: Jayce, Shen, Irelia, who I believe would be 3 of the more popular current tops.

If they could change the game so that the jungle played less of a role in winning and loosing the lane and whether you won or lost relied on outplaying your opponent instead, a lot would be fixed. There is currently too much incentive for jungles to sit in lane and camp people. GP/10 have basically turned them into a secondary support with tankiness and CC. It's pretty lame and has hurt the flexibility of the lanes a lot imo. The fact that pro teams in order to counter it have started to send 2 heroes top to lane the opponent top should say something about what it can take to shut some of those champs down.

Hopefully for season 3 they'll do something to shake this up. Give supports some different source of income and remove GP/10, make jungle creeps worth more. That would do a lot on its own.

Then they don't have to release champs who are insanely powerful kit wise and a nightmare to balance like Jayce with his 10,000,000 tons of utility and damage.

As for normals. Anyone who's played with me knows I like them.

I think LoL has conflicting goals. On one hand, it wants the game to be more fun for players. That means making it easier to farm and get to late game items. On the other hand, it wants games to be more exciting for competitive play. That means more roaming, more ganking, more team play.

 

[krnmastersgt]

I think LoL has conflicting goals. On one hand, it wants the game to be more fun for players. That means making it easier to farm and get to late game items. On the other hand, it wants games to be more exciting for competitive play. That means more roaming, more ganking, more team play.

Hence why HoN and DotA were never as popular with general players, but much more interesting at a professional level. League balances champs to all their tiers, competitive and casual alike and tries to strike a balance (and they usually fail, hence Xin). But at least they tried, HoN and DotA just outright stated here's some heroes just for lolz, but the rest of their heroes were balanced to be competitively viable options, even if meant that they became insanely powerful pubstomps.

Also I don't think there's anything Riot can do to "fix" a lane, the lane splits as they are now is just a natural progression if the meta. Eventually we won't have a bruiser top, ap mid, adc + support bot. It's a very effective combination but it is possible to plan and counter those with other strategies/tactics, the reasons pros don't use them in tournaments is they prefer the more efficient/safe ways to win (though I don't see why they don't gamble when they're clearly outclassed).

 

[EDUSAN]

Jayce might be op but against champs with good sustain he cant do enough damage to them...

well...they changed things after season 1 from what they saw in tournaments, they might do the same this time for season 3.

the composition of teams and the position in the maps are just the meta. It changes, i would say, not caring about the champs released. and i like how in LoL champs that were almost never picked, almost useless, find their spot. Like Blitzcrank, he was almost never used before this actual meta. Or Mundo, nobody knew how and where to use mundo, now he found his place in the jungle

before the support - ranged bot lane.... i remember the roaming meta, i used to like that... making someone pick a bot champ that can hold the lane 2v1 and pick alistar, get to lvl 3 and start walking from one lane to the other was so much fun, but the roamer would become useless lategame.... they fixed that with the gp/10 0cs support meta, since now they can afford some items just by being there.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I'm trying to figure out if Rengar hard counters jayce. Had a game top last night and I got more or less mauled by Rengar. Been a while since I got destroyed that hard.

I couldn't keep up with the empowered Q damage output and his innate sustain at all.

 

[EDUSAN]

have you played against Nasus? last time i played jayce against a nasus, he would just stay in the middle of the wave using Q on minions and with his lifesteal passive he could heal all the damage i tried doing to him.

If i tried getting closer to use the hammer, he would just use the ENDLESS slow/as debuff and hit me with 1 Q. I ended up always losing the trades.

edit: i hate nasus. he forces the other team to have a dedicated ganker on top 24/7 to prevent him from going out of control. 1on1 he is pretty hard to beat, at least in the laning phase, and once he hits 6 he tower dives you to your fountain if needed.

 

[crownjules]

Riot says they are really shaking things up for S3, but it could be a couple of months between the end of S2 and beginning of S3. Personally, here's a few of the changes I would make:

1) Like DOTA, wards have a stock in the shop that replenish. Max of 4 with one refreshing every minute. Also make Oracles like the other consumable potions and it drops after 4 minutes. Wards give you information and that is key in a game like this. Being able to deploy less wards means you're not going to be able to cover every route. It also means the support isn't expected to blow all their income on wards.

2) Get rid of GP10 on items. In games these days, 3 of the 5 roles are guaranteed to get at least one of these. Support, jungle, top and sometimes even mid. And the fact that 3 of the 4 build into really good items now just takes away from the "sacrifice power now to get power later" idea that was originally behind them. Not to mention they lend to the 0 CS support meta which has stagnated for the last 1.5 years. But that alone can't fix it as this will just starve out supports for gold since they can still basically do what they need to do, so...

3) Assist gold on minion kill. Something like 20-30% of the minion's gold goes to nearby allies. Now you open up the meta because you can have one laner getting the primary gold, but other people in the lane still get a decent amount as well. It'd be possible to run a 2-1-2 or a 1-1-3 and not have anyone completely starved for gold. This in turn allows the support role to be taken by heroes that could fill the role nowadays if they only had some gold income.

They've already stated this is going to happen, but better itemization. We need some good active ability items as well as better AD caster items. It'd be nice if almost every ADC didn't have to build IE+PD.

 

[crownjules]

Some Riot posts on their intended changes in the jungle:

We've actually been working on changes for the jungle in anticipation for Season 3 and though I can't really give all the details here because we are still iterating, I'd like to give you guys some insights into what's going on.

There are a multitude of issues we're tackling and they are very much intertwined. The current dominant jungle strategy (GP10 Support / Tanks) is fairly stagnant and the overall current jungle playstyle in many cases severely limits potential strategy and choices in other lanes/roles as well.

One large problem is that efficient farming of the jungle has very little pay off compared to constantly applying lane pressure by camping / ganking. Overall junglers severely lack in gold unless they successfully gank and snowball the game from the get-go and/or opt for a GP10 strategy.

The approach we're currently taking is to significantly increase the rewards of jungle camps over time (junglers already have a huge impact on the early game). To go along with this though, we are buffing jungle camps back up to actually be more threatening while simultaneously offering new / improved item paths that allow players to specialize in the jungle. Overall we want junglers to be rewarded for building combat stats rather than always being forced to build gold generation items.

This is not the only thing we're changing in the jungle for next season, but these types of things are definitely on our radar.

...

Well a lot of the directional changes we're making for Season 3 are to make sure there are niches for the various jungle types.

For example, the nerfing of the jungle camps' damage really left no room for "safe" junglers such as Warwick since sustain was no longer a thing. Everyone can just clear with Boots + Health Pots and apply pressure to lanes.

When we do these changes for Season 3, there may be some junglers who are simply too strong in too many categories and we'll have to address that in the context of the new jungle. Overall though, we're looking to make sure there's a reason to bring X jungler over Y jungler depending on the situation..

 

[Hacp]

Hence why HoN and DotA were never as popular with general players, but much more interesting at a professional level. League balances champs to all their tiers, competitive and casual alike and tries to strike a balance (and they usually fail, hence Xin). But at least they tried, HoN and DotA just outright stated here's some heroes just for lolz, but the rest of their heroes were balanced to be competitively viable options, even if meant that they became insanely powerful pubstomps.

Also I don't think there's anything Riot can do to "fix" a lane, the lane splits as they are now is just a natural progression if the meta. Eventually we won't have a bruiser ttop, ap mid, adc + support bot. It's a very effective combination but it is possible to plan and counter those with other strategies/tactics, the reasons pros don't use them in tournaments is they prefer the more efficient/safe ways to win (though I don't see why they don't gamble when they're clearly outclassed).

I think the best solution is to make items cheaper. Accelerate the power curve and make it possible for 3 item builds at 25 minutes regularly.

 

[EDUSAN]

the endless path to balance all the champs

maybe a good idea to make junglers that jungle and not gank worth it could be to have increasing exp/gold with every complete camp that the jungler does in chain

for example: if you do blue, wolves, wraith, lizard, golems... the golems would give you a good amount of exp more than if you would just do golems after a gank

would reward junglers that do the jungle path more often. and probably reward counterjungling to prevent someone to keep chaining jungle camps

 

[krnmastersgt]

have you played against Nasus? last time i played jayce against a nasus, he would just stay in the middle of the wave using Q on minions and with his lifesteal passive he could heal all the damage i tried doing to him.

If i tried getting closer to use the hammer, he would just use the ENDLESS slow/as debuff and hit me with 1 Q. I ended up always losing the trades.

edit: i hate nasus. he forces the other team to have a dedicated ganker on top 24/7 to prevent him from going out of control. 1on1 he is pretty hard to beat, at least in the laning phase, and once he hits 6 he tower dives you to your fountain if needed.

Nasus is in my top 3 favorite champs, but he's very underused because he doesn't mesh with the current meta all that well.

Most people don't know but correctly played Nasus can pretty much handle the lane against anybody, now there are a few bullies that give him issues during lane. The only ones I'd ever have real issues with are Riven and Darius personally, everyone else I'm able to sustain through their harass and if they go balls deep just wither them and get out.

So you might think, well if he can beat anyone in lane, why isn't he a strong top pick?

The issue is that unlike the popular top lane picks, he doesn't become very strong very quickly. His only serious source of damage is his Q, which while able to build up to become IMMENSELY powerful, takes quite some time to farm up properly. He just doesn't really have the damage scaling that other top laners do, so even if he's beating them in the lane in overall farm, they still out-damage him quite severely.

He only really fits in a team that wants to force a stall and just farm up endlessly, maybe with a Veigar in middle or something because his true late-game is so insanely powerful, it just takes a very long time to get there.

I did get to have a free-farm Nasus game recently though, +720 damage on my Q by 38 minutes in so I was quite a problem

 

[EDUSAN]

yeah... nasus has some flaws in his kit when he goes out of laning phase and he might get kited and cc to death not being able to strike a single Q.... but...

HE DOESNT ALWAYS HIT HIS Q
BUT WHEN HE DOES, IT HURTS LIKE HELL

3/4 HP in 1 Q to the less tanky champs is always awesome to see if nasus is in your team

but anyway, in the laning phase, he is a pain in the ass.

i should buy him someday

 

[zebano]

First off, TPA was amazing...

If people really want to break meta I'm still convinced that ADC mid or top is the way to do it. Caitlyn for instance dominates many many mid lane matchups though she usually has to buy some MR before her opponent hits 6. I love corki top against most champs excepting Rengar and Jayce who are the two most broken champs in the game. Vayne and Ez also works quite well top lane.

The best part about this is that you then have options of what to send bottom. Mage + Support is often a kill lane and when not it's often very strong. Two of my favorites are Brand/Taric and Nunu/Cassiopia (cass with bloodboil is amazing and if you snowball your target as well...) and the second one in particular shuts down those pesky Taric/Ez and Sona/Ez lanes hard. Following the Asian meta concepts (pushing) Zirze and my Nunu/Cass lanes usually get 2-4 kills up, kill the tower and start forcing teamfights to great advantage. You can also of course do the classic double bruiser or another that I rather like is Taric/Morgana because once Morgana hits level 5 she can sit there and farm until your team wants to teamfight but Taric is free to roam.

 

[crownjules]

Twisted Fate visual update patch notes:

Twisted Fate

    Twisted Fate has received a visual upgrade. Click here for more details.

Fiddlesticks

    Fixed a bug where Fiddlestick's autoattack could be interrupted by Dark Wind

Hecarim

    Fixed a bug where using Devastating Charge on an enemy Tower causes it to redirect aggro onto Hecarim

Katarina

    Updated Katarina's Lore

Lulu

    Fixed a bug where Lulu's autoattack could be interrupted by Pix

Malzahar

    Fixed a bug where voidlings could get stuck in walls when using abilities in impassible terrain

Rengar

    Fixed a bug where Rengar could double jump

Ryze

    Fixed a bug where Ryze's autoattack could be interrupted by Spell Flux

Syndra

    Fixed a bug where Syndra could force Monsters to attack each other
    Fixed a tooltip error for Force of Will
    Fixed a bug where stunning an opponent on Dominion could cause a graphical error with the scoreboard

Co-op vs. AI

    Intermediate bots now have a chance to use a random skin

General

    Attack speed buffs / debuffs will now immediately take effect instead of having to wait for the next autoattack
    Fears will no longer reset jungle minions
    Fixed a bug where Baron Nashor remained "out of combat" when an enemy stealth unit is nearby
    Fixed a bug where in rare instances Champions would not be able to autoattack

 

[Firsttime]

New TF and Brand should join the NBA

 

[krnmastersgt]

First off, TPA was amazing...

If people really want to break meta I'm still convinced that ADC mid or top is the way to do it. Caitlyn for instance dominates many many mid lane matchups though she usually has to buy some MR before her opponent hits 6. I love corki top against most champs excepting Rengar and Jayce who are the two most broken champs in the game. Vayne and Ez also works quite well top lane.

The best part about this is that you then have options of what to send bottom. Mage + Support is often a kill lane and when not it's often very strong. Two of my favorites are Brand/Taric and Nunu/Cassiopia (cass with bloodboil is amazing and if you snowball your target as well...) and the second one in particular shuts down those pesky Taric/Ez and Sona/Ez lanes hard. Following the Asian meta concepts (pushing) Zirze and my Nunu/Cass lanes usually get 2-4 kills up, kill the tower and start forcing teamfights to great advantage. You can also of course do the classic double bruiser or another that I rather like is Taric/Morgana because once Morgana hits level 5 she can sit there and farm until your team wants to teamfight but Taric is free to roam.

Eh I don't really understand the synergy you're going for with those bot combos you explain.

What I would say is a very powerful bot lane combo is Fiddlesticks + Morgana, as the Fear from Fiddle will make them meander very slowly so its an easy binding, combo'd with the crow to prevent any real retaliation and Tormented Soil + Drain for some epic sustained damage output with massive MR reduction from the Soil + Fiddle passive combo.

 

[crownjules]

Nunu/Cass - Nunu BBs Cass who also gets a speed boost when her Q hits she she can keep hitting Twin Fangs and more Qs. Made even easier by iceballs.

Taric/Brand - Taric stuns. Then Brand has an easy E - W combo and can hopefully land his Q for a second stun.

One of my favorite non-standard bot lane combos to play was Leona + Xin. Once you hit level 3, it's killing time. It's probably even more ridiculous since the Xin buff.

 

[zebano]

Eh I don't really understand the synergy you're going for with those bot combos you explain.

What I would say is a very powerful bot lane combo is Fiddlesticks + Morgana, as the Fear from Fiddle will make them meander very slowly so its an easy binding, combo'd with the crow to prevent any real retaliation and Tormented Soil + Drain for some epic sustained damage output with massive MR reduction from the Soil + Fiddle passive combo.

xstrifex hit on it but Nunu Cass is simply enough movespeed for you and slows on your target that they literally cannot get out of your twin fangs range without a stun or a flash. It's enough damage that With only a 1 kill lead and shopping once at level 6 we towerdove an Ezreal Taric for a double kill and both lived since Nunu was able to flash > consume a minion right after he ulted.

Taric > Brand is just like Taric > Caitlyn in that you chain the stuns but Brand has much better burst damage. Plus leading with Taric's stun means that you will hit your W which is the primary burst and hardest part of Brand's combo to land.


Oh yeah the real reason I was posting was Spider Queen release and Twisted Treeline remake with tons of TT specific items (including no wards at all).

TT - http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/twisted-treeline-remake-pbe

Spider Queen - http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/elise-spider-queen-revealed

 

[EDUSAN]

taric or leona / sivir (but with taric is easier)

land stun, hit with boomerang twice. Lots of early damage

 

[crownjules]

NM, didn't see the spider form. But her human form looks like Zyra/Diana/Syndra with a couple of extra useless legs tacked on.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

So many nerfs. Very hard rengar nerfs and also hard jayce nerfs.

I've been enjoying rengar like crazy thought before the nerfs come into play.

 

[crownjules]

Yeah, they talked about the upcoming nerfs on the PBE:

Ez's Essence Flux losing the ASPD debuff
Blitz and Sona are getting reductions to base stats so they're not as durable
Jayce's Thundering Hammer is losing base damage (so it's just % HP + AD scaling)
Rengar's ferocity bonus on Savagery is being reduced
Syndra's getting a bunch of QoL changes to make her stuff work better
Deathfire Grasp is having its stats nerfed and the base damage on the active nuke reduced in exchange for the AP ratio being increased
AP ratio on Eve's ult is getting reduced
Also the slow proc on Phage/TF is being reduced on ranged attacks and its duration being reduced as well in general


VVVVVV: Shadow Isles is a new location like Noxus, Bandle City, Demacia, etc. Elise (Spider Queen) comes from there and they've reworked the lores of Karthus, Morde, Hecarim, Yorick, and Eve so that they also are from there now.

 

[ImpulsE69]

So I'm confused..is Shadow Isles a new map? The Twisted Treeline remake? or just a name for their "halloween skin / items sales"

 

[crownjules]

Some say the world will end in...zombies

Here are the new TT items:

Ichor of Illumination (500g) - Consumable: Grants 30-64 Ability Power based on champion level, 15% Cooldown Reduction, and a huge boost to mana and energy regeneration for 4 minutes.

Ichor of Rage (500g) - Consumable: Grants 20-42 Attack Damage based on champion level, 20-42% attack speed, and 15% increased damage to turrets for 4 minutes.

Wooglet's Witchcap (2700g; Needlessly Large Rod + 1100g): +80AP, Unique Passive: +10% movement speed, Increases AP by 25%.

Blade of the Ruined King (2825g; Bilgewater Cutlass + 1000g): +40AD, +10% lifesteal, Unique Passive: Your attacks deal 4% of the target's current health in magic damage and heals you for half the amount (120 max vs. minions). Unique Active: Drains target champion, dealing 150 physical damage plus 50% of your attack damage and healing you for the same amount. Additionally, you steal 30% of their movement speed for 2 seconds - 60 second cooldown.

Wicked Hatchet (1955g; Long Sword + Cloak of Agility + 710g): +20AD, +18% critical strike chance, Unique Passive: Your basic attacks inflict Grievous Wounds on enemy champions, causing 50% reduced healing and regeneration for 1.5 seconds.

Soulsight Lantern (1600g; Madred's Razor + Vampric Sceptre + 150g): +23AD, +30 Armor, +12% life steal, Unique Passive: Your basic attacks against minions and monsters have a 20% chance to deal 425 bonus magic damage. Unique Active: A stealth-detecting mist grants vision in the target area for 10 seconds - 1 minute cooldown.

Lord Van Damm's Pillager (2962g; Heart of Gold + Brutalizer + 800g): +40AD, +350 HP, Unique Passive: +10% Cooldown reduction, Unique Passive: +25 Armor penetration, Unique Passive: +15% Spell Vamp

Blackfire Torch (2890g; Kage's Lucky Pick + Catalyst the Protector + 800g): +50AP, +300 HP, +350 mana, Unique Passive: Your spells burn for an additional 5% of the target's maximum health in magic damage over 3 seconds (effect 50% for AOE).

Overlord's Bloodmail (2565g; Giant's Belt + Ruby Crystal + 980g): +850 HP, Unique Passive: On kill or assist, gain 200 HP over 5 seconds.

Also a whole bunch of items won't be useable on TT anymore like GA or Bloodthirster. Also no wards.