Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 58 of 260)

      Champ of the Week: Mordekaiser Wrapup

      June 19, 2011 /

      Mordekaiser Wrapup.

      As I write this post, I’m in the process of wrapping up my final Mordekaiser game for the week. It’s a doozy. I was 2-0 at level two, and godlike shortly thereafter. The Twisted Fate that went mid for my team had a Deathcap and a nearly completed Lichbane at 20 minutes. Somehow, though, it is a joyless experience.

      It may be that I’ve reached critical League of Legends exposure for the weekend. I watched most of the Dreamhack streams, often while playing a game of LoL myself. I spent more time on Twitter this weekend than I probably have since opening my account. But I think it was more than that. I think the real issue was that there wasn’t ever a competitive moment in the game, and that’s when Mordekaiser really seems to shine. I know he can be strong in certain comps, but for individual play, I think he’s the first champion I would seriously advise against.

      Riot’s development staff often talks about the “feast or famine” nature of certain characters, a trait that I think perfectly describes Mordekaiser. If left to his own devices, he can get a huge farm going, to the point that he’s virtually unkillable. With the right target under his Children of the Grave control, he can effectively solo three or four enemies, generating massive shield and dealing huge damage with his minion. On the reverse side, if he doesn’t get a minion and doesn’t get a solo lane, he has a hard time staying relevant over the course of a game.

      If I could change one thing about Mordekaiser, it would be his ultimate. That spell is just too polar and the poles are too far apart. Mordekaiser’s minion solves all of the problems that face a team after a tough team fight, and I just think it’s too strong. The minion functions as a full life champion, especially if you can get a ranged AD character. It also gains huge health from Mordekaiser’s own pool and it holds turret aggro, meaning a narrowly won teamfight quickly turns into a push. No other character, with the possible exception of Annie, can provide that for a team. Giving him some sort of CC skill in place of the ultimate could be interesting.

      If I could change two things about Mordekaiser, I would make the second his shield mechanic. It just isn’t interesting. It allows him to be too aggressive and punishing against newer players and it’s underwhelming against veterans.

      On the whole, I’m glad to be done with Mordekaiser week. I tried a wide array of rune pages and mastery builds to deal with his shortcomings, but nothing really seemed to work. Onward to next week. I think I’m going to have to treat myself to someone I really enjoy.

      Champ of the Week, Editorial, league of legends

      Season One Finals down to Europe vs. North America

      June 19, 2011 /

      The Season One Finals at Dreamhack continued today with some truly extraordinary matches. Most of yesterdays matchups seemed to be fairly one-sided, match by match. One team would gain control of the map and exploit that advantage to the end of the game. Some of the matches had exciting moments and there were a few upsets, but the games were pretty short and straightforward.

      Not today. Today the games were utterly insane. There were strange picks, odd bans, and epic, sprawling teamfights that ran from one end of the map to the other. There were Baron kills and counter Barons. It was a really exciting day, and we owed most of the excitement to the European teams, Fnatic (FN) and Against All Authority (aAa). Neither of the top two European teams looked very good yesterday – apparently Fnatic was missing a player and using a sub – but today they looked incredible. Fnatic showed up with amazing lane presence and some very smart bans against CLG, locking HotShotGG and company out of the tournament. Against All Authority dropped the first game in its series against TSM, but went on to steamroll to victory.

      It was interesting that the tournament turned into a Europe vs. North America event, and it looks like it’s going to continue down that path. Tomorrow brings us to the semi-finals and the finals. As you can see from the bracket above, Team SoloMid and Epik Gaming will be fighting for the chance to face the loser of the FN vs. aAa game. That winner will then go on to face the winner of Fn vs. aAa. We could be looking at Europe vs. North America for the finals, but if TSM and Epik are off their game, North America will be out of the race altogether.

      I hope you’ve had some time to check out the Season One Finals. I was really impressed with Riot’s streaming, as were roughly a million other unique visitors to the Season One microsite. I didn’t think I would get so excited, but it was really cool to be able to see the best teams in the world really showing their strength today. Seriously, if Fnatic’s Shushei doesn’t make you want to play Alistar, nothing will.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Season One Championships are underway

      June 18, 2011 /

      The Season One Championships are well underway at Dreamhack over in Sweden. I’ve been watching for most of the morning, though I did miss the super early games. It’s been interesting to see not only the different comps and bans, but also what Riot has done to livecast the event. At the peak, I saw some 180,000 people watching the games, which is really impressive for the first season of a video game.

      Riot was also pushing its Twitter presence. I think the company is hoping to get “#esports” trending, though I’m not sure what sort of community presence there is on Twitter. Most of the time the #leagueoflegends hashtag is pretty sparse, but I would love to see a more active dialog happening there, even just for link sharing.

      I think the best part of the tournament to this point has been the preview of Spectator Mode. It looks really nice, giving the viewer a ton of data about what’s happening on the battlefield. As we’ve seen from a few of the games, though, data isn’t everything. It’s true that at the end of the game the winning team typically has the gold advantage, but I thought Epik’s Doublelift was totally screwed when he got killed twice in the first couple minutes of the game against Fnatic. Miss Fortune also remained nearly 100 creeps ahead of Doublelift through the end of the game. Still, Epik somehow managed to pull a win (which, come to think of it, was Westrice’s Akali game).

      At any rate, I’m really impressed with Riot’s commitment to making the championship an event for everyone, not just the players in the tournament. Have you guys been watching?

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      The things we take for granted

      June 17, 2011 /

      League of Legends champions.

      Riot senior producer Travis George put up a post on the forums yesterday evening asking what Riot had been doing well lately and for suggestions for improvements. It was a really nice way to ask for feedback, one that I think can easily be as valuable to a company as criticism can be. It can be tough to know, especially with a community as large as League of Legends. I’ve been trying to round out my MOBA knowledge lately, spending time with the few games that are out there and a couple different beta products. It’s been a great reminder of the many things that League of Legends does so well.

      For one thing, it is definitely the most responsive game. That sounds like a strange thing to get excited about, but play a game in which the controls and UI feel sluggish and you’ll know what I mean. Even basic things, like altering the cursor sprite so that I know a spell is queued up, don’t show in several other games. The only game that holds a candle to LoL in terms of responsiveness (from the MOBA world) is HoN, but even that feels a little slow at times.

      League of Legends is also hands down the easiest to understand by just watching the screen. I truly believe the downfall of many modern games is that they try to hard to look cool or edgy and just end up looking ridiculous. Demigod might be the only game that really made modern graphics look good (seriously, how cool was Rook), but even that game was a bit hard to grasp by watching the battlefield. I think any RTS player could easily sort out what is happening in a LoL match without much effort. I’m not sure the same can be said for several other MOBA franchises.

      This last one is a matter of personal taste, but I like that the League of Legends UI attempts to teach the player the game. That little line from turret to target is a perfect example of a teaching mechanic in game. The player gets immediate feedback when he steps in range of the turret. It’s clear who/what the turret is targeting. It’s also clear when it changes targets, allowing players to analyze what action caused the change. I totally take it for granted, but playing games that don’t have those features makes me want to pull out what’s left of my hair.

      I could go on for a while, but I would probably be violating an NDA or two with some comparisons, and that’s just not my style. The point here is that there is a lot of excellent design behind League of Legends that I probably don’t mention enough.

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      Yorick ready for next week

      June 16, 2011 /
      yorick_splash

      It looks like I was wrong about the Yorick release schedule. We got the “champion approaches” post today, which usually means he’ll be out in the next week. While there certainly are a solid number of Rioters overseas, there are also quite a few on domestic soil, working to keep the game going. Hopefully that will translate into Yorick’s release on Tuesday.

      But enough of that – let’s check out the skills.

      Omen of War: Yorick’s next attack will deal bonus physical damage and summon a Spectral Ghoul that deals additional damage and moves faster than Yorick’s other ghouls. While the Spectral Ghoul is alive, Yorick moves faster as well.

      Omen of Pestilence: Yorick summons a Decaying Ghoul that arrives with a violent explosion, dealing damage and slowing nearby enemies. While the Decaying Ghoul remains alive, nearby enemies continue to be slowed.

      Omen of Famine: Yorick steals life from his target and summons a Ravenous Ghoul that heals Yorick for the damage it deals.

      Omen of Death (Ultimate): Yorick conjures a revenant in the image of one of his allies. If his ally dies while its revenant is alive, the revenant sacrifices itself to reanimate them and give them time to enact vengeance.

      Unholy Covenant (Passive): Yorick’s attacks deal more damage for each summon that is active. Meanwhile, Yorick’s ghouls deal some percent of Yorick’s Attack Damage and have some percent of his total health.

      I mentioned the other day that I wasn’t as worried about Yorick as I have been about Mordekaiser, but I am a bit worried that his passive will allow him to snowball in lane the way that Mordekaiser does. If his ghouls get too tanky, too quickly, he’ll be able to zone just about anyone out of lane while sustaining himself with a healing ghoul. I am glad to see that the collision ignore has been removed from Omen of War.

      Watch for him next week!

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

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