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

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HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Full patch notes:

I'm hearing Fizz is pretty OP. Playful/Trickster is much like Vlad's pool and Sealstone Trident on-hit passive DOT is powerful at rank 5 (70 + .35AP + 8% of missing HP). Plus all his stuff is 10 second or less CDs.

Had a feeling he would be OP as all hell when I read his description.
 

Firsttime

Platinum Member
Mar 31, 2005
2,517
0
71
I've been playing a lot of Riven top lately. She's sleeper OP. Can straight up bully sustains out of top before level 3. Has tons of damage when built AD, you need a tanky jungle or support though to really maximize her potential. So like a Atmog Noc or Taric or Mumu or something. But seriously if you haven't played her recently do it. The tweaks made her flow so much better.
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
I've been playing a lot of Riven top lately. She's sleeper OP. Can straight up bully sustains out of top before level 3. Has tons of damage when built AD, you need a tanky jungle or support though to really maximize her potential. So like a Atmog Noc or Taric or Mumu or something. But seriously if you haven't played her recently do it. The tweaks made her flow so much better.

Yep, which is why she is not a popular choice in higher elo games. Skarner is another popular now, surprisingly, early choice for higher elo players. Mainly because he Q scales so well in damage and he has the highest base + scaling AD auto attack in the game. His big problem is getting the slow on his Q to stick since it requires a second hit. But using red buff and his ult allows you get get that second Q to keep slow on them permanently.

It also works great in certain team comps. Especially with an Anivia or trundle. A team fight is brewing mid and no one is willing to take the first plunge? Have skarner pop in to pull one with his ult while anivia walls off the rest. Kill the singled out one quickly and have a 5 on 4 situation in your team's favor. Unlike blitzcrank, who can do the same thing, his doesn't rely on a skill shot.

I'm still not convinced of skarner's viability in all team comps and situations, but he's not quite the turd I thought he was originally. The buffs did help him as well.
 

sash1

Diamond Member
Jul 20, 2001
8,896
1
0
Good luck with that, I've heard servers are so busy that you need 3+ people for custom games to start =( That said, I've also heard of some great clear times (3:15 Phoenix Udyr without a pull). Let me know how it goes since I'll have to adjust my Trundle, Udyr and Lee Sin setups though I assume all will be going 21/9/0 or something close to that.

so at first i got scared while testing out rune pages, cause i noticed the XP increase requires quite the investment into the utility tree, but i was on skype w/ my friend at the time and he said they buffed the jungle XP, and indeed they did, it's still the same without the xp increase.

annoying that smite is in the defense tree now, but not too big of an issue. masteries still pretty standard for AD junglers, and i'm going 17/4/9 with shyvana/skarner. i may tweak that a bit, have to see. before the change i went 16/0/14 with them.

and on a related note, i checked to see if stonewall had anything yet on the new masteries, and of course... he does: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HwO8KZjNR0
 
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zebano

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2005
4,042
0
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I started with at 1200. First game I went in had a troll and same with the next 4. I dropped to 1100 quickly. Won a couple more than got stuck with more trolls. Dropped to 1000 even quicker. I chalked it up to everyone wanting to play rank right as the season reset which allowed the really bad trolls back in to join with the halfway decent players. I was at once point sitting at 15 losses and 3 wins in ranked. I managed to finally claw my way back up to even when I reached 24 losses and 24 wins. Then lately I've ran into a string of trolls again once I reached 1200 during rank.

What bugs me is that I typically jungle, play tank, or support. I try to fill in the roles needed. I prefer that. It doesn't help when you get pure trolls. Here are the problems I typically encounter when playing a given role.

1) As a jungler: I know the game is headed fast into the losing column when the following happens. I get counter jungled hard with no support from the nearest lane. It's one thing to be at mini golems or red buff and have the other jungler come try to duel you or steal some jungle. It's another when you are dueling and every single person on the other team manages to leave their lane to help their jungler in your jungle while your team sits on their ass and then blames you. I'm sorry but if the bottom lane can come all the way to top and still make it back without any significant tower damage (at low levels there isn't going to be) then your team should be doing the same.

The other problem I run into is lanes that fail hard. They die 3+ deaths before 10 minutes without trading those deaths. Which means they are feeding from being over extended or tower diving too early. Then they blame the jungler for not ganking their lane as to why they have those deaths. A jungler can't be everywhere and when multiple lanes are failing it is not the junglers fault. In fact, it is NEVER the junglers fault for your deaths in lane. I only blame a jungler if they never make a gank attempt or fail miserably on their ganks and die. Or are so slow than they are still level 6 when other players are all pushing 8 to 10. Then they become worthless from being so far behind for just being slow.

2) As a tank. I know the game is headed to a loss when your team never follows through your initiation. Especially when you have the other team out of position, low life, and with an easy kill with no chance of dying for your team members if all nearby ones join in.

The other problem is people get anxious right before a team fight and initiate without the tank or go in too early to get blasted away. This really hurts if they are your teams main dps. Be patient, wait on the tank, and follow in when the tank goes in. Pick your targets wisely. The tank's target may not be the target the team needs to focus on. Typically most tanks have some sort of disable, that is best used on another major disabler before they can get their disable off first. Thus the tanks target may not be the primary target. The tank may go after the other tank first just so that the other team's squishies now have no protection and are easier to kill. The problem is when the rest of your team is too stupid to realize this and goes automatically for the wrong target.

3) As a support. All the above times 10. A good support can make a mediocre team GREAT. But it can't improve upon shit. I consider a support character like a multiplier character. However, you can't multiple by zero, if that is what the rest of your team is, and expect to be any better. If your tanks don't get tank items, if your dps doesn't get dps items, and if they are horrible at positioning and judging the best time to either strike or retreat, a good support isn't going to fix this at all. They can make it less likely a team mistake ends up in a catastrophic failure that costs the game, but they can't fix a catastrophic failure of a team in the first place.

4) As DPS. If you are the pure dps char on the team, you still have to rely on a tank that knows what they are doing. A good support is nice as well. I'm not talking about a support that is playing a gung ho Soraka trying to starcall to death the enemies in bottom lane at level 1 while stealing all the CS. That is way too common a problem I run into when I play the DPS role.

Personally when I do DPS or bruiser I like to be in the solo lane. I KNOW I am 90% of the time going to win that lane or keep it at a wash. I rarely ever lose a solo lane. Unfortunately I get so many people that demand and cry over having that solo lane. Only to watch them lose it horribly and early.

5) As a bruiser. At least as a bruiser I have the "least" problems. I'm not as nearly considered about a tank that isn't initiating or not being tanky enough. I'm not considered about DPS not dishing out the damage as much as they should. Why? Because as a bruiser I can usually take up the slack in either case. I can't take up the slack in BOTH cases, which does happen, but if one or the other is lacking I can shore that fault up on my team with a bruiser.

Again my only real problem with bring a bruiser is getting true trolls in other lanes. I may be doing awesome with 5+ kills in my lane and tons of CS, but the other two lanes all have 5+ deaths each and little to no kills. Then they just give up. Some bruisers can carry better than others, but nothing can be done if your team quits cause they sucked early and hardcore.




That's been my experiences thus far.



I agree with the multiply by 0 bit. My only real suggestion is to duo queue with someone you trust who has a 100 point elo difference from you (but not more than 250). The point of this is that you guys will have first and last pick. That first pick allows you to play a fotm, strong champ (Morg, Sion, Shaco, Lee Sin etc.) and make a big difference. If you tell people you're a duo queue you're more likely to get your last pick into a non-support role, though that doesn't always happen. The other thing you could try are gimmicky kill lanes just because at lower elo I'm not sure the other team will be good enough to avoid a kill when you run Brand/Taric bottom lane. Of course I would only do this if you have a pirate/Nocturne in jungle. If you want aggressive bottom lane Leona + Tristana has a ton of burst and Corki is a bit underrated in how much damage he can do early. I prefer mid + jungle over the 2 bottom however since you end up with more control over the map. I would avoid passive farm lanes like Ashe + Soraka since you simply can't trust top lane to survive that long. It's for this reason that a Sion is going to be a better pick than Morgana who doesn't roam all that well (or quickly).
 

zebano

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2005
4,042
0
0
Had a feeling he would be OP as all hell when I read his description.

I've not run into any good ones, but XSpecial had some nice dodges on his stream yesterday with playful trickster (dodged Sona ult).

I've been playing a lot of Riven top lately. She's sleeper OP. Can straight up bully sustains out of top before level 3. Has tons of damage when built AD, you need a tanky jungle or support though to really maximize her potential. So like a Atmog Noc or Taric or Mumu or something. But seriously if you haven't played her recently do it. The tweaks made her flow so much better.

Riven can really pump out the damge, I've seen a couple destroy Nasuses and Irelias and others hold their own against stronger top lanes like Swain and Udyr. She also has really strong level 2/3 ganks as a jungler against teams that don't start with wards.

Yep, which is why she is not a popular choice in higher elo games. Skarner is another popular now, surprisingly, early choice for higher elo players. Mainly because he Q scales so well in damage and he has the highest base + scaling AD auto attack in the game. His big problem is getting the slow on his Q to stick since it requires a second hit. But using red buff and his ult allows you get get that second Q to keep slow on them permanently.

It also works great in certain team comps. Especially with an Anivia or trundle. A team fight is brewing mid and no one is willing to take the first plunge? Have skarner pop in to pull one with his ult while anivia walls off the rest. Kill the singled out one quickly and have a 5 on 4 situation in your team's favor. Unlike blitzcrank, who can do the same thing, his doesn't rely on a skill shot.

I'm still not convinced of skarner's viability in all team comps and situations, but he's not quite the turd I thought he was originally. The buffs did help him as well.

Skarner is amazingly strong right now. Thankfully not many of the lower Elo people have picked up on this yet.

21-9-0 Trundle is beastly. I only tested in two normal games, but the farm didn't suffer and he hits noticeably harder against champions.
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
Jungle Kayle w/ surge. 1/0 in ranked so far!

Surge is really good on any of the AP champs that can scale that off their auto-attacks like Kog and Teemo. I'm taking it all the time now on Taric as well, just like I took Rally back in the day when it didn't suck. Pop Surge, pop Ult, wreck tower.
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Mastery changes for Crit damage and crit chance is stupidly powerful for champs like Trynd now. Level 1 and near two shotted me with double crits for ~280 a pop. LEVEL FARKING 1!!!!! I healed back up, luckily as since I'm Warwick I can just do that. He came at me again once he reached level 3. Hit 4 crits in a row and damn near killed me again. I was like... wait this isn't right. He didn't even have any crit items. Just boots and pots. I was able to hold him down some though since I could Q and steal life from him. But I would have been dead at the very least, or pushed out of lane, with just about any other champ. Or if I hadn't taken a dorans ring first for Warwick.


Trynd was wrecking early game because of those changes. Might have to see about trying him for a bit now.
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
The mastery changes seem to give ADs a stronger early game and APs better late game scaling. Which is kind of what their weaknesses were before - most ADs need to farm up and APs usually start out with good base damage abilities. This just kind of flattens it out so everything's the same and I'm not sure I really like that. It takes away some of the pre-game strategic decision making.
 
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crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
Couple minor things:

You can now have up to 20 rune pages
Vlad is getting a legendary skin called Blood Lord

edit: Saw what the new skin looks like in game. Feeling: meh. They could have done a lot better with it.
 
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HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Had one absolutely frustrating game last night. One guy cost us the game at the end purposefully when we had victory in our grasp.

Here's what happened.

I was grouping with aT3C last night. He was playing an excellent Lee Sin jungle while I was laning bottom with Sona. I was going tank/support Sona role. I had picked CV and promote (not sure if I like promote yet that much). I was grouped bottom lane with a Graves. We had a Gragas mid and a Trynd top. This was a ranked game. The Trynd and Graves were duo'd as well as aT3C and myself. Other team had a Shyvana, Ryze, Udyr, Gankplank, and Nasus. Gragas was shutting down Gangplank pretty well middle. Trynd was holding his own top against Nasus. I was stuck bottom though with an hyper aggressive Graves. Graves does hurt low levels, but he's not going to get a kill being stupid. In fact it will be just the opposite. Why do so many carries I go bot with when I'm support think I can save them every time with spammable heals from death's door? Anyhow, he over pushed, and over extended. I would ping that udyr was coming and he wouldn't back off. Which means he died, 3 times in fact, to jungle ganks by udyr. I ended up dying twice later when they just decided to push through and tower dive me. Luckily when they did that, Lee sin was there to show up and kill them for me so at least I was trading deaths for an assist.

We manage to make it to late game alright. They were winning for awhile and managed to knock down our inhib first before we took their towers in mid. Actually, we only had 1 tower taken down which was the mid tower. We then managed to snag baron when we baited 3 of the other team to come early. Which we killed them, grabbed baron, and pushed hard. Managed to come back doing this. Game went back and forth while we snagged baron 2 more times. On the 3 time getting baron, we got an ace off them while only Trynd died. We had taken down their inhib in mid and had super minions there beating on a tower. Of course we had only top and bot inhib left with no tower, and our mid inhib was gone. They had super minions beating on our inhibs on top and bot. Gragas was low and decided to go to base to heal and defend. Lee Sin, Graves, and myself were all full life (or close to it) with damn with mana. Lee Sin and I realize right now is the time to win the game. They had over 30 seconds before anyone would respawn. We rush down, and Graves decides to take their blue. I'm pinging away like crazy and typing "GRAVES GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE AND KILL THE NEXUS WITH US!!!"

After he kills blue guess what he does? He goes back to base. Says that Trynd was screaming at him to defend. I told them they were both idiots because we would have won if he had come. Between Lee Sin and myself as Sona we didn't have the dps to finish taking down both towers and nexus in time. Got the towers, but not the nexus before they respawned. Of course they then proceeded to kill us, push our mid, and take down OUR nexus instead. Causing us a loss when we should have had the win. Even the other team was making fun of Graves for being a retard and costing us the game. I'm personally thinking he was trolling at the end on purpose like he was at the beginning while feeding.

I ended up 5/10/35 as Sona too. The high deaths came at the end while they were focusing me. Which was silly cause I was tanky as all hell. RoA, Merc Treads, Spirit Visage, Frozen Heart, Archmage Staff, and Shurelai Reverie. Over 3K hps, over 200 armor and over MR when I have my defense aura running. With baron buff I was about 350 AP. I didn't go down easy or fast with that setup. But still they focused me. Which means my team had plenty of time to take them down while they were beating on me. Which was good cause I was at the end trading my single death for at least 3 of theirs. Which allowed us to come back.

As I said though, that Graves cost us the game in soo many ways. It was very disheartening losing that way. The other team wasn't the better team that beat us. I don't have any problems losing because my team tried the best it could and lost. I do have a problem when someone on my team trolls to sabotage our chance to win.
 

zebano

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2005
4,042
0
0
Anyone know how the LeBlanc's have been doing so much damage post-patch? I assume they have 21+ in offense but I just can't match those results... are people running flat AP runes as well?
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Anyone know how the LeBlanc's have been doing so much damage post-patch? I assume they have 21+ in offense but I just can't match those results... are people running flat AP runes as well?

AP and MagPen.

Get 21+ in offense tree. Really don't need That much more as there are less AP enhancing masteries than there used to be.
 

Abel007

Platinum Member
Jun 12, 2001
2,169
0
76
I haven't tried LeBlanc yet, but Jungle Yi has been fantastic so far with the new masteries. I've loved every game I have played with him since the change.
 

xSkyDrAx

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2003
7,706
1
0
Anyone know how the LeBlanc's have been doing so much damage post-patch? I assume they have 21+ in offense but I just can't match those results... are people running flat AP runes as well?

Leblanc has always been doing crazy dmg early game but the new masteries seem to let ap characters push almost 40ap early game with AP blues and quints and a dorans ring. Only tried this with fiddles though but it's pretty nice.
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
AP and MagPen.

Get 21+ in offense tree. Really don't need That much more as there are less AP enhancing masteries than there used to be.

You mean more.

Old tree: +1AP/lvl, 15% Mpen, and the capstone (but caster's never got that)

New tree: +4AP, 10% Mpen, +1AP/level, +1.5% damage, +5% AP, and +4% damage to < 40% HP
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
Damage is way out of whack at starting levels right now because of the major enhancements to the offensive mastery tree. Like I said, seeing a trynd at level 1 opping 280+ damage crits from the get go and doing it nearly every hit = retarded.
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
I've been reading on the SA forums, which a few Riot employees post on, that dodge runes will be taken away soon (likely refunded). So it seems the dodge mechanic will soon be gone. That really only leaves Jax, Sword of the Divine's activation, and dodge/armor boots to change.
 

HumblePie

Lifer
Oct 30, 2000
14,665
440
126
I've been reading on the SA forums, which a few Riot employees post on, that dodge runes will be taken away soon (likely refunded). So it seems the dodge mechanic will soon be gone. That really only leaves Jax, Sword of the Divine's activation, and dodge/armor boots to change.

Well with the dodge masteries gone, there is very little in the way of being able to obtain dodge. Which before was a perfectly valid counter to champs like Trynd.
 

zebano

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2005
4,042
0
0
Well with the dodge masteries gone, there is very little in the way of being able to obtain dodge. Which before was a perfectly valid counter to champs like Trynd.

They just need to change the boots to give Pantheon's passive!