Some of you may recognize the name Jon St. John. Yeah, he has a badass name in real life, but he’s also done voice acting for one well-known and incredibly delayed badass: Duke Nukem. Well, Jon St. John has a new project, and one that could be of interest to LoL players. He’s doing voice acting for Valve’s version of DotA.

I don’t really have any details, and frankly, the DotA moniker comes from JSJ, not from Valve. What we do know is that Valve hired IceFrog (the mind behind DotA (along with Zileas)) to make something to please DotA fans. Jon St. John posted to his Twitter account this weekend that he has been doing voice work for DotA at Valve Software. I’m not sure why he would call out the name of the game without hearing it from Valve, and if they didn’t give him the go ahead, you can bet he wouldn’t be talking about it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot for the LoL community, but it could be bad news for any HoN fans out there. I’ve played a bit of HoN and been completely unimpressed, so it’s not like the name DotA will kill a game like LoL. It could kill HoN, though, especially with the kind of money Valve has. What could be a problem for LoL is just that – the money.

Valve could very easily sweep in on LoL territory with more bank, more developers, but more importantly, more support. With better server uptime and the bankroll to back a quicker development cycle, Valve could make a dent in the LoL player base. That’s not to say Valve will do that, just that it could with the resources it has. Valve was notoriously slow with some of the TF2 developments, though, even if TF2 has a massive player base. Let’s also not forget that IceFrog did work on HoN, and we can all see how well that’s going.

In short, I think it’s totally possible that Valve is working up a DotA clone and it has the potential to make a bit of a stink for the big players in the MOBA world. There are so many variables, though, that Valve has a long way to go before

I know from the comments that a couple of you have been wondering where I’ve been. Posts have been a little sporadic over the last week, but I can happily invoke Paul Newman from The Color of Money when I say, “Baby, I’m back!” I had been busy with some other projects for work and I got out of town over the holiday weekend to visit good friends from college.

I’ll have full updates on the changes to LoL over the course of the day today, but in the meantime, here are a few updates from my weekend in upstate PA. First, Hudson Four Grain Bourbon Whiskey is incredible, and a great bottle to share with three other friends. Using grubs on a hot day can land you some enormous bass. Halo 2 on a LAN is still one of the best ways to wait out a rainstorm and always bring chips when there’s salsa or you’ll be horribly disappointed.

The patch that introduces Garen has officially gone live on the Test Realm. So far I’ve only had the chance to sneak two games, one of which crashed in epic fashion so I’ll have to hold out on the real feedback. I can give some impressions, though, regarding the newest addition to the League of Legends list of champions.

First, I can’t help but think that Garen is the Tryndamere remake and they’re just going to delete Tryndamere from the game. Obviously I don’t really believe that, but if you look at his skills there are some perplexing similarities. Judgement is like Spinning Slash, but with much greater damage output potential and slow immunity. Courage reduces incoming damage (a bit like Mocking Shout). He has an active skill that deals extra damage and crits and, just for good measure, silences too. His ult is definitely different but for overall “feel” I’d say the two are a close pair.

I’ll try to get another game in tonight but I’ll definitely have some more detailed analysis on the Garen playstyle tomorrow.

I’ve been on a crazy string of losses recently and I’ve been trying to sort out why. I can point to all sorts of things, but a lot of my problem can be attributed to the new map. I’ve been trying out some weird comps and checking into alternative hero combinations to try to pull out some wins. There have been a few occasions, though, where my defeat was almost surely due to my teammates.

Take my daily lunchtime game today. I was playing Ezreal solo in the middle lane on Summoner’s Rift. Everything was going well. I was harassing Ashe down to gankable levels and, had I not forgotten that my Cleanse was on “D” and my Ignite on “F” and not the other way around, I would have easily taken First Blood. Sadly, the bonus gold went to the opposing Warwick for ganking our Ryze on bottom at level 4.

Immediately Ryze started calling out the team for his death, mostly blaming his lanemate, Heimer, for not using turrets as wards. Though I disagree that Heimer should waste turrets that way, especially when wards are only 90 gold, I kept my mouth shut so as not to start one of those inevitable team implosions that leads to a quick loss. It didn’t matter. Ryze was constantly in bad positions on the map despite our encouragement to back off and before 20 minutes he was 0-6 with less than 20 creep kills.

I try not to call people out too much because everyone can have a bad game, but this is something different entirely. This was a player who ended the game 0-8-0 and spent the entire match blaming his teammates for the loss. I decided to take a quick look at this previous 10 game stats and here’s what I found.

Defeat: 0-8-0
Defeat: 2-5-5
Defeat: 1-7-6
Victory: 6-7-6
Defeat: 1-16-8
Victory: 8-11-11
Victory: 4-12-8
Victory: 1-4-12
Victory: 6-10-13

As I said, I’ve been on a losing streak, so I tried to remain objective, but look at those numbers. 1-16? That’s abysmal even for a new player. His total stat count for the last 10 games is 29-80-69. Now I realize stats rarely show the whole picture, but 29-80 is a scary teammate to have, especially for someone who picks DPS toons a large majority of the time. I think his only non-assassin game was one as Morgana. The rest were Ryze, Anivia, Twitch, and a random Heimer. Those stats suggest a player that doesn’t at all know the limits of his health pool compared to his DPS or someone who is perpetually in bad map position with regard to the rest of his team. The assist count is nice, but again, most of his toons have some form of AOE, so it’s not that surprising.

In the spirit of fairness, here are my stats for my own previous 10 matches:
Defeat: 2-1-3
Victory: 3-2-7
Victory: 7-1-6
Victory: 6-3-8
Defeat: 6-5-2
Defeat: 0-3-0
Defeat: 3-5-3
Defeat: 3-7-0
Defeat: 5-5-3
Defeat: 3-3-6

For total stats we have 38-35-38. Obviously that’s much more balanced, and this is one of my worst losing streaks in months. That 3-7-0 game is ugly, and I admittedly was playing like a jackass that game, but in the context of my other stats you can easily see that it was rare misstep in a string of decent performances.

All of this is to say that the I continue to be unimpressed with the ELO system. Basing a player’s rank solely on whether he wins or loses leads to crazy matchmaking results. I want to post on the official forums and beg for a performance-based system, but the reality is its just too hard. There are too many factors to consider when looking at stats, and you can bet there would be an army of angry players that want more credit for a win that the stats say they barely contributed to. The more reliable solution is to find a group of two or four other players with whom you can regularly premade for some kind of reliable ELO. The rest of the time you’re going to catch a lot of players who have hit the right games and made it into their respective ELO brackets.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned beat down at one time or another. The other team bangs out a couple early kills and suddenly you and your teammates are stuck 3 levels down and your towers are getting steamrolled.

This situation happens frequently enough that Riot is looking at ways to change it. According to a post from Zileas, they’re trying to discourage the 5-man roam that has become so popular. Here’s his post:

Our philosophy on this issue is that individual snowballing is good, and team snowballing is bad. Right now, team snowballing occurs too much — one super carry twitch is a lot easier to handle than 5 guys who are 3 levels higher than each of you.

We are going to make some experience table tweaks to reduce team snowballing without hurting individual snowballing much. We are also going to make a new 3 lane map that is larger, has less cross-map connectivity (so that there is higher cost to 5 man roam, and less shutdown of the farming/laning phase via the first tower being down), etc.

We probably will nerf flash.

We wont be nerfing snowball items. Emotional highs from the game you super carried make this genre sticky. We removed it too much in the beta, and it cost us. Sorry, but being super carry annie or super carry corki once in a while gets a player through the 8 defeat in a row streak they hit the next day.

I’m on the fence about early gold for kills. It’s been something we have been talking about, for the reason you cite. OF course, an early kill is also harder than a late kill.

I can appreciate the thought behind this, though I worry about the pace of the game. The roaming gank squad has already taken its toll on pace. I’ve had a number of games recently where safe play from both sides led to more than 20 minutes without a death. Discouraging ganking seems like it will just make the laning phase that much longer and more painful. There are plenty of games in which I feel like losing my outer turret is the best thing that could happen because it breaks me out of the laning mentality. I realize that this is the point – to keep people from leaving lane – but that’s where the fun of the game is.

If anything, I think the best solution is the 3-lane map with less interconnectivity. That at least gives you the option to farm a lane once the tower is down with some potential for intra-lane ganking so long as there are enough hiding spots.

What do you think? Are there too many games in which snowballing is a serious problem or are you okay with the 5-man roam?

I hate to make this post so soon after my “avoid your matchmaking woes” post, but I’ve been in some seriously frustrating matches lately, and it’s worth stating the reason. I think matchmaking prioritizes finding a game within the estimated queue time too highly.

Here’s the deal: I queue up in Arranged Team with two friends, both of whom have less than half my games played. As a long time DotA player, I’m also willing to assume that my ELO from solo queuing is a bit higher than theirs. Because matchmaking can’t find a perfect match for our composition, it instead attempts to account for my high ELO by placing someone with very low ELO on my team. As a for instance, I played a game last night in which my opponents were all around their mid twenties. My friends and I received a level 11 as a teammate. She played Annie. She went 3-14 and cost us the game. Consider also the image I used for this post. This was an actual game I played. The other team didn’t have a player above level 12. In case you’re wondering, I’m “The Wiggin Boy.”

I understand that fast games are better on the whole. Players want to experience the game as quickly as possible, not sit in the lobby waiting to find a match. As ELO improves, though, I think it’s fair to assume that players are more invested in each game, more concerned with winning. To put those players at a disadvantage just because a match couldn’t be found in 60 seconds or less doesn’t make sense. I would gladly sit in queue for 3 minutes before each game if it improved matchmaking results.

For a game that has been downloaded over a million times, LoL has a long way to go before it provides a smooth playing experience.

On the whole, I’ve been pretty impressed with Riot for its support. The servers are rarely down, and when they are, it’s typically for short periods of time. Until recently, anyway. It’s no secret that there’s been a lot of server trouble since the last patch. I won’t blame today’s issues on the patch, not in full anyway, but there have been red posts confirming that the latest patch included at least one crash bug. Couple the server-crippling problems with glitches like double spell casting and I have to ask, did they patch too soon?

My answer is yes. Absolutely. Frankly, I don’t know why it wasn’t broken into to two patches. There was so much content that something was bound to go wrong, particularly on a rushed schedule. Granted, the community was getting restless for Pantheon and Gragas, but both in one patch? Why? Pantheon was obviously ready – the only complaint I see about him is his ultimate, which needs very little change in my mind – but Gragas is a confused mess of AP, physical damage, and tanking skills. He doesn’t scale well and fits poorly into most team comps. Why not save him for a later patch.

I wouldn’t bother writing this if it didn’t have me worried about later patches. My hope is that the Twisted Treeline patch will get plenty of testing before it flies through. On the whole, I’d be much happier with six hours of scheduled maintenance each week to roll out small patches than the 10+ hours we’ve had this week to fix the blunders of the latest patch.

Yesterday’s post was about the importance of team coordination and the simple fact that playing a premade can save you a lot of headaches. Today, I wanted to cover something that’s easy to overlook in a game you’re dominating: pushing.

You probably know the story well. You drew a good lanemate and the gods that be have matched you against a scrubby Twitch. Within ten minutes your team has ten kills to the other team’s one and you have all the outer turrets pushed. You would keep ganking but your opponent has virtually disappeared off the map, appearing only to defend a tower. Before you know it you’re 35 minutes into what looked like a quick surrender, and you’re starting to get pushed back. A few of your teammates got greedy and lost some killing spree gold to enemy turrets. By 45 minutes, you’re staring a loss in the face and there’s little to be done. Communication has completely broken down and your team is dying in groups of two or three, leaving the towers sorely lacking defense. By 55 minutes it’s a blowout, and you’re stuck wondering how the game turned on you and blaming anyone with a name you can quickly type.

This is probably the most frustrating loss in the game, and it’s really a symptom that separates the good teams from the bad. Regardless of how well your early game went, you need to keep pushing, intelligently. The reason your team got ahead in the early game was smart play. You weren’t tower diving for kills. You weren’t lingering in lane with five MIAs. You were playing smart, and you need to continue to do so to win the game.

Most teams that suffer this sort of loss neglect the three lane dynamic. They’ll constantly push one lane while the others are driven to their own towers. Then, if the push fails, the other team turns to capitalize on the death timer. Pushing inner turrets takes planning. If you see two teammates about to cross river mid for inner turret, push bottom up. When the other team attempts to defend, they’ll likely defend with 2-3 against the smaller force. That’s when you collapse with your remaining three teammates and push that mid inner turret. If your opponent sends all 5 to defend that mid tower, have your teammates retreat while you continue to push bottom and take a chunk out of the turret. Remember, the only turrets that regenerate are at the Nexus, so any damage done is progress.

If you find the other team is trying to turtle, focusing on team wipes to stay in the game, get out into the woods. Get yourself some buffs and take dragon down. If your opponent is particularly cautious, don’t be afraid to take Baron. When you’re ready, push with 3-4 teammates in one lane while the others do the same in a separate lane. The pronged attack forces the weaker team to split up, increasing their disadvantage.

Whatever the case, don’t give up an early lead because you were greedy for kills. You got the lead by playing smart and, as your ELO rises, you can only hope to keep that lead by sustaining that intelligent playstyle.

I have a fairly large base of friends playing League of Legends now, mostly thanks to my shameless plugs every time we’ve spoken over the last several months. Of those people I was the first to hit 30, so I get asked most of the questions regarding strategy, hero choice, etc. The big question of late, though, is what to do when you get into a losing streak.

Games like LoL tend to ebb and flow quite a bit. I often feel unstoppable for as many as ten games, only to turn around and lose the next ten because of sloppy play and unskilled teammates. Things are never completely out of your hands, though, and a little focus can save you a lot of frustration.

First off, take a look at your team comp. It sounds really basic, but it’s a mistake I see from almost every team. You cobble together a few wins and think you must be so skilled you can win with any comp. Not so, and it’s usually the base reason behind a streak of losses. Make sure you have a balance of range, nuke, dps, and meat.

You also need to take a look at lane comps. A balanced team means nothing if you have a lane with no disable. Try to put at least one disable in each lane and if you have spares, pair one lane for ganking. That lane can be responsible for pushing tower first and then roaming to help the team.

Lastly, take a look at your summoner spells and tune them to account for you team’s weaknesses. If you’ll have trouble laning early, consider Fortify on at least 2 champs. Exhaust is great for shutting down the enemy Twitch or Shaco in team fights, and Cleanse can help save you in big team fights. Avoid relying on spells like Flash and Heal because they can quickly turn into a crutch that you’ll be unsure how to play without.

Once you’re back on your feet, try to at least keep a few of these things in mind. If you have a regular team to roll with you can be a little sloppy, but playing pugs, you need every advantage you can get.

You had to know this was coming. Since the most recent patch, Udyr has become hugely popular, despite his relatively good position before the buff. Well, he’s getting nerfed, as confirmed by a red post on the forums.

I don’t disagree. He is obviously overpowered, mostly because of the change to stance cooldown. I know, a lot of players have been bitching about the phoenix form buff, but phoenix wouldn’t make as much a difference if his attack speed didn’t get unmanageable in the early game. It’s the attack speed that lets him kill golem with such ease, which translates to dragon solos and a ridiculous early game farm.

The nerf, though, will likely be to phoenix form. Riot has stated that it wants Udyr to have better feel, which means a three stance rotation instead of two. It’s a change I’m mostly happy with, though it puts Riot in a position to give him some nerfs that could heavily affect his late or early game, and no one likes a hero that can only really shine mid-game if he gets a safe, defensive early farm. It’s just not a fun way to play.