Author: Jeff Morgan (Page 69 of 260)

Ranked Champion Challenge is complete!

May 13, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

ryze_splash_6

It’s done, folks – I now have wins with 76/76 champions in ranked games, the vast majority of which came in 5v5. In fact, all 11 of the champions I had remaining when I started attempting this achieved victory on Summoner’s Rift. Exciting stuff. You can see my top 10 ranked champions in the image below.

Ryze was the holdout champion, and in all honesty I thought I might be stuck on him for a week. He’s a tough champ to play against tanky teams because after a certain point he just stops scaling all together and you’re stuck with a defensive build against a bunch guys who can soak everything you throw at them. After six attempts, though, I managed to pull a win (went godlike in that game, no less). I think it was really our Eve that pulled us through. She did a great job ganking lanes early and keeping their Vayne down.

This was a really enjoyable challenge. It makes me wish Riot would get serious about getting some achievements into the game. Achievements are a tough thing for a MOBA because it can encourage some unconventional and sloppy play from players who should probably be learning the game, but it could be very cool to tie some kind of IP bonuses to achievements. At the very least it could encourage champion diversity from more players, which I think would be a great thing.

Champions, league of legends

achievements best ranked champion champion diversity champions ranked champion challenge ranked champions ryze

Ranked Champion update

May 12, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

In between my Vayne testing and the occasional Kog’Maw game, I’ve been keeping up with my quest to get the 76/76 ranked champion wins. There have been some tedious games and I’ve had more than one Ryze win snatched out from under me by leavers or sheer foolishness. After picking up my Karma win this afternoon, I’m up to 74/76 champion wins, with just Ryze and Vayne left on the list.

My hardest won victory has definitely been Jarvan. I know he’s strong but I just couldn’t seem to get him to work with my team comps. I’m not really sure what it was, but since I first made the post about this little challenge I had to try six times before I finally managed a win.

Here’s a look at the champion list I started with. The crossed out names have been accomplished and the number denotes the attempts made, including the victory game.

~~Alistar:~~ 3
~~Eve:~~ 1
~~Jarvan:~~ 6
~~Karma:~~ 3
~~Karthus:~~ 1
~~Lee Sin:~~ 3, but I fed hard in the win game. Totally got carried.
~~Maokai:~~ 1
~~Rumble:~~ 1
Ryze: 4
~~Soraka:~~ 2
Vayne: 1

My one Vayne attempt was nothing short of infuriating. I was up against Soraka and Alistar, with Tryndamere, Kassadin, and Rumble to support them. It was utterly impossible to get a kill. At one point in the game – mind you we surrendered at like 23 minutes so this was early – I think I counted 17 turret hits on Alistar in a row. All the same, this has been a lot of fun, even with its frustrating moments.

Champions, league of legends

best ranked champions ranked ranked champions ranked win challenge ranked wins

Are you using tenacity items?

May 11, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I know it’s only been one day since the patch but the servers were up so quickly I’d imagine people were able to play a number of games yesterday. So, how are the new tenacity items treating you? Have you been buying them or just sticking to your trusty Merc Treads?

I think I’ve only purchased the Cloak and Dagger in any of my games so far, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I really like that it offers an opportunity to buy Ninja Tabi or the cooldown boots, which are really the only boots I tend to use on my DPS characters. Occasionally I’ll get ‘Zerker’s Greaves but that’s rare.

So far, I think the new items will mostly be for niche uses, like Gangplank. He gets a lot of benefit from Cloak and Dagger, where other champions would probably do better to spend the cash on more damage. I am a little worried that some of the tankier toons will benefit from it as well. I’ve already seen more Warwicks in Sorcerer’s Boots than I care to.

Current Affairs, league of legends, Patches

cc reduction cloak and dagger crowd control eleisa's miracle moonflair spellblade new items tenacity

Champ of the Week: Kog’Maw

May 10, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve done a couple AP champions and a melee assassin for this feature – I think it’s time for some ranged DPS. Looking at Kog’Maw’s kit it seems that, other than Vayne, he’s probably best suited for flat out tank killing. Ashe is likely still the best pick overall for a ranged DPS, but if Kog’Maw can get ahead, he can burn tanks like no other. That said, he’s very susceptible to crowd control effects and suffers from a fairly weak early lane presence.

Basically, I want to see how Kog’Maw performs against a variety of comps with an average farm. He is absolutely devastating if overfed, which also has me interested in seeing how well he can carry against tanky DPS teams. I think the changes to Wit’s End make it the perfect Kog’Maw item, so I’m going to try a few builds centered around a Wit’s End rush to see how well it scales.

Check back later in the week for more impressions. Hopefully I can get a few Vayne games in before the day’s end and have some impressions on her tomorrow as well.

Champ of the Week, Editorial, league of legends

kog'maw kog'maw buff kog'maw build kog'maw nerf ranged carry ranged dps

Champ of the Week: Nocturne Wrap Up

May 9, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Nocturne

Once again, I spent much of my Champ of the Week playtime early in the week, knocking out quite a few Nocturne games with very poor results. One of the problems with strong, popular champions, at least as it pertains to this feature, is that I can rarely get them in ranked. These champions will be banned often, which means reverting to normal games for testing. That’s not all bad, but if I can say one thing for ranked it’s that teams attempt to put together a decent comp at least 50 percent of the time. I can’t say the same for normal, which is why my early Nocturne games ended so poorly. Nocturne is definitely not the kind of champion that can just flat out carry anything. The bruisers are still too strong when played en masse, especially if Nocturne’s teammates are all as squishy as he is.

That said, it still happened. I still had a couple games with solid team composition and in those games I was dominant. I was particularly thrilled to have a game last night in which I was paired up with a Twisted Fate. Our combined ganking power was just too much for our opponents. Nocturne’s ult is a big part of what makes him strong. He doesn’t have to worry about positioning for teamfights. All he has to do is get within the general vicinity of a fight before ulting onto anyone in vision. I would often wait until fights were virtually over before heading in, making sure the enemy team had burned summoner spells and ultimates and cutting up low-hp targets.

That’s really where Nocturne excels; he absolutely trashes low health, low armor targets. He is slated to catch some nerfs tomorrow, but he will retain the damage steroid on Duskbringer, despite the nuke nerf. I’m not sure I need to say much more about the champion than what I’ve said in other posts – his kit is just too overwhelming for most champions to handle.

As for the one thing I would change, I think it would be his ultimate. It just needs to be changed, completely. The rest of his kit is strong enough on its own – he doesn’t need a global vision reduction along with a huge radius dash for positioning. Give him a weakness. Make the people playing him actually think about their positioning.