Category: league of legends (Page 146 of 163)

LoL: My Eve explanation

April 16, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Evelynn. I feel like I owe you guys an explanation. I made a passing mention of Eve the other day along with some malicious comments and I figure it’s time I come clean. The people I regularly play with know just how much I hate Eve and the reason why, and I think it’s only fair you do too.

First, a little history. I came to LoL from DotA, so I had a pretty good understanding of the game’s basic mechanics. The only thing to learn, really, was the champions. I started off with Kassadin and Master Yi, but after seeing what Twisted Fate would do to a game I saved my IP until I could buy him. He was dominant, but again, I was coming from such a similar game that it was easy for me to maximize his potential.

Then I met Twitch. It was pretty clear that he was this game’s Rikimaru, only stronger because he was ranged and had the ability to hit multiple toons and then nuke. Prior to his nerfs he stayed strong through most of the ELO brackets. Then I met Eve. She seemed strong at first – she got stealth, had good nuking potential, and seemed to break everyone but the strongest toons. Luckily, the LoL designers implemented a consumable even better than gem – Oracle’s Elixir. I bought one early when I laned against an Eve and presto, she was almost completely nullified. It wasn’t quite the same for Twitch because he’s ranged, has an AOE slow, and can still blow up an entire team.

Don’t get me wrong, Eve is great at the lower ELOs. People rarely play to counter one another so she can run around legendary as often as she pleases. That’s actually a bad thing, though, because it pigeonholes players into toons that have limited viability as the player improves and it discourages new players from playing the game because they get stomped by one toon with seemingly no recourse.

What Eve really needs is a complete remake, an overhaul that makes her fun both to play and play against. The last time anyone from Riot commented on her they said Eve was at the bottom of the priority list precisely because she does so well at low ELO. Honestly, that seems like a terrible reason to keep a toon around. Give newer players a chance to get better rather than getting stomped by a truly uninteresting toon.

league of legends

best eve eve eve buff eve nerf eve player high elo low elo mid elo noob noob toons noobs

LoL: Unconfirmed skins on the Test Realm

April 15, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

The most recent Test Realm patch has some interesting content in the champions screen on the client. Several of the champions have skins listed with no graphic content, just some names. Here’s the rundown:

Red Riding Annie
Big Bad Warwick
Warrior Princess Sivir
Scuba Gragas

That’s what I can remember for now. I like the Red Riding Hood theme and I’ve honestly been waiting on it for a while. I could care less about the Sivir skin if only because she’s the most boring, auto-win toon in the game. Scuba Gragas, though, sounds awesome.

On a side note, googling “Red Riding Hood” for images turns up some…interesting…results.

Development, league of legends

annie skin best skins gragas skin new skins sivir skin skins unreleased skins warwick skin

LoL: Garen patch is live on the Test Realm

April 14, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

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.

Development, league of legends

garen garen abilities garen feel garen preview garen skills league of legends lol test realm

LoL: Sometimes you just have to turn and fight

April 14, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Since my recent Kennen winning streak it’s been tough to stomach losses, and I’ve had my fair share. In a few of the most recent encounters I’ve felt confident of the win but we managed a pretty severe loss. Our team comp looked great, but we just couldn’t initiate well and once we initiated it seemed everything went to hell.

Then I saw an encounter that explained to me a lot of our problems. We had just won a gank-turned-teamfight fairly handily. All five on our team were up with just two of theirs. We started to backdoor a turret because we were close and our creeps were on the way. Two of my own teammates were injured and when our two standing opponents made a show of defense, our whole team ran off. Luckily we were on Skype so I stood my ground, encouraging everyone to fight. We killed off one of the remaining two and pushed the turret.

It made me realize that sometimes you just need to sack up and fight. Early in the game it seems people are willing to take risks to get some kills, but once late game hits, everyone is so conscious of the consequences that you forego a number of chances to get an ace or simply win a teamfight and gain time to push.

In a more recent encounter, my teammates and I were pushing a turret on TT. We had already taken the bottom inhibitor and, though were low, we stayed to try to push. As our opponents slowly respawned, we fought back just to get aced. Over the course of our skirmish, though, we pushed their last remaining inhibitor turret down to just 15% health and their bottom inhibitor respawned and was subsequently killed by the wave of super minions our opponents weren’t there to stop. Sure, it sucked getting aced, but overall it was a successful push. We shackled them to their base for defense, respawned, regained map control and pushed for the win.

Long story short – don’t be afraid to fight, especially if you have a good initiator. If your team is standing around, drop Tibbers on the next person to get close. Your allies will get the message and go all in.

league of legends, Strategy

composition fighting team comp team comps teamfight teamfighting

LoL: Kennen burnout hit me hard

April 13, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I love Kennen, I really do, but in my winlust I may have overplayed him. It was an admittedly excellent run. I won eleven games in a row and seeing that little ninja’s glowing eyes next to a full list of green “Victory” snapshots was pretty fantastic. The thing I love most about LoL isn’t finding one champ to suit me, though, it’s the variety in the champion list, so I figure it’s time I branch out once more.

It’s been a bit of a rough go so far. I’ve played as Trist, Taric, Mundo, Ashe, Alistar, Shen, Amumu, Shaco, and Corki and only won about half of those I’ve played. Part of the problem has been comp. I was so focused on playing toons I hadn’t touched in a while that I let team comp go out the window. In one 5-man last night we didn’t have any AOE mage love. None. There’s not a doubt in my mind that we would have won had I played Kennen or Annie or Fiddle but instead we were handed a pretty tough loss to a team we outskilled.

On a high note, I’ve finally unlocked every toon in the game except Eve (who I will never unlock and never play, but that’s another post entirely). I was sitting on 7400 IP after my Kennen purchase and subsequent winning spree, and I still had Tryndamere, Cho’Gath, Kayle, and Janna to purchase.

Things are looking good for a couple games this evening, so hopefully I can rectify my losing situation. A buddy is looking to pick up Fiddlesticks so it would be great to support him with Malphite or Alistar. Of course I’ve never played Janna so I might give her a shot as well.