Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 126 of 260)

      The supermids aren’t always your best option

      September 25, 2010 /

      KogMaw_Splash_2

      First, I’d like to draw your attention to my awesome title for the champions introduced since season one launch who exceed most other champions at taking the solo lane: supermids. The reason I thought it up (I know, I’m so creative) was that I needed a way to talk about Vlad, Kog’Maw, Miss Fortune, etc. without typing that out every time I wanted to talk about the great carries in the game. Enough of that, though. On to the post.

      I played two games tonight with a friend with hopes of breaking into the 1600s in ranked solo. I had been playing well all day and things just seemed to be going right. We lost. Both games. Hard. The biggest problem in both cases was our comp. In the first game my buddy was stuck in the mindset of 3s so he banned Singed. No biggie, still 3 bans, but we decided to joke around and ban Eve. That left a few strong toons on the board. Our opponent first picked Warwick so my buddy and I snagged Garen and Miss Fortune. Solid start for the team. Unfortunately, a teammate thought we couldn’t leave Kog’Maw on the board, so he picked him over some CC (Morgana was still available). Our fourth teammate chose Sona and I knew we were in trouble. Our fifth pick: Mordekaiser.

      Sure, we had strong toons, but the sum of the parts was virtually nothing. Without crowd control to keep the enemy away from the carries, we got rocked. You can go too far in the other direction, too. For my next game I didn’t ban Amumu because frankly, a lot of people suck with him. The other team first picked Warwick again. I snagged Garen for a buddy and our second player picked Taric. We had said someone should get Amumu, but I was already thinking we were on the verge of being too tanky. With good DPS, though, we should have been fine. Our third player takes Shen and immediately locks him in, even though our fourth had said several times that he was picking Amumu, which he still did, leaving us with 4 tanks, short on damage. I had my friend pick TF in the hopes that we could stun them down. We couldn’t. Our outside lanes were getting worked and it was just a matter of time before our opponents had complete control of the map and we were too short on DPS to burn them down.

      Even when the supermids are available, you have to focus on comp over individual toon strength. I asked everyone after the first game if they really thought we had a decent comp. The response was this: “You had Garen and Kog’Maw. Your comp was great.”

      Sigh.

      Editorial, league of legends

      Keep it classy, League of Legends

      September 24, 2010 /
      Just....wow.

      Just....wow.

      A lot of people like to brag about the quality of the community in League of Legends, and while I think it’s pretty solid, we should also try to keep a little perspective and police accordingly. For instance, if I were a rapidly growing developer, I wouldn’t want the phrase “Bitchesluvmycock” to appear ANYWHERE on my website, even if it is user-generated content.

      Editorial, league of legends

      Do you lie about your performance?

      September 23, 2010 /

      Lying Shaco.

      I feel like I already know the answer to this question, and even if it was yes, I doubt many people would be willing to admit it. I had a strange thing happen the other day. I got into a game in which a teammate was playing Shaco. I love Shaco, and I think he can do great things for a team if he’s smart. Our Shaco seemed fine, but he just kept saying how great he was with Shaco. He finally said, “guys, I have never lost with Shaco.” My response: “that’s a lie, but no big deal. Play smart, have fun.”

      It was probably an unwarranted instigation, but there was just no way that was true. Very few people playing this game can boast a record so significantly over .500 that they would have champions they’ve played quite a bit be undefeated. My teammate proceeded to feed, giving up his double buffs to the enemy Xin Zhao shortly after acquiring them on several occasions. At this point, he deserved a little grief. I said, “First loss, eh?” to which he replied, “Yup, check my profile. I was 16-0 until this game.”

      Now why would you say that in a game that makes stats publicly available? My only regret is that I couldn’t check his stats from the lobby to share the info with our team (and our enemies, who he had been goading before the game started). The screenshot shows our friend’s stats. Not only were the 16 wins a complete fabrication, obviously he had lost quite a few ranked games as Shaco as well. I really don’t get why he would not only lie, but initiate the lying. Weird.

      So do you lie about your performance in game?

      league of legends

      Riot adds “The Button,” service ticker to PvP.net

      September 22, 2010 /

      loss-forgiven

      That’s a game from last night, shortly after Riot’s new service ticker alerted me that the company was aware of some general service issues and working on a fix. Loss forgiveness comes as a result of what’s known as “The Button.” The Button is a switch Riot can throw whenever there’s trouble that sets the game into a special mode to prevent players from accruing losses and losing ELO as a result of technical difficulties. In the game you see above, everything was fine until about the five minute mark. From that point forward there was a solid five second delay between a given command and the corresponding action. I’m glad to see I didn’t lose any ELO as a result. The Button does allow winning teams to still get the win and get ELO recorded, but at 50 percent the normal rate.

      While I understand the idea behind the service ticker – more communication with the player base – I do hope Riot uses it sparingly. It could easily create a placebo effect, which might result in more backlash than if Riot just hadn’t said anything. I know when I see that yellow box all lit up, I’ll be looking for problems, and that’s not the way the game was meant to be enjoyed. If used sparingly, though, I think it could do just fine.

      Development, league of legends, Patches

      Sona impressions – the gift that keeps giving if it lives long enough

      September 22, 2010 /

      Sona.

      I’ve seen Sona in every 5v5 game I’ve played since the patch dropped and I’ve had a chance to play her a few times myself. At the outset she looks like a pretty solid support toon, though she does seem to enforce the rule that you shouldn’t have more than one support. Her damage output is very low, but the buffs she offers her team are nice. Sona’s biggest drawback is her health pool and the fact that there isn’t a ton she can do to stay alive.

      As I sort of expected, Sona plays a lot like Udyr. She’s very spammy, which is fine for a time, but in most games I felt like it didn’t matter when I pressed my buttons so long as I pressed them every time they were up. That’s not exactly an exciting way to play the game. Soraka isn’t particularly exciting, but it is nice to see that fat heal actually save someone, whereas with Sona, you get to watch your heal almost save a few people.

      That said, the buffs Sona provides are actually pretty nice. The movement buff is great for running down enemy carries, or even getting in range to take them in a team fight. The constantly rotating damage and resistance buffs aren’t huge, but they’re enough to give your team that extra oomf when you need it. Think of Sona like a very tiny (but big-breasted) version of the Baron buff. Of course, you get that buff at the cost of another tank or dps toon, but in the right comp it seems okay.

      The main thing that will keep me from regularly playing Sona, though, is that spammy playstyle. Because each aura persists for three seconds after a new aura is activated, it’s easy to get the cooldown reduction for 100 percent uptime, which means you can basically knuckle-roll your way up the lane. That’s not a fun playstyle, and it creates one of the most annoying mix of sounds in the game (seriously, I can’t handle the constant refresh of that harp – it’s awful).

      Champions, Editorial, league of legends

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