Category: league of legends (Page 160 of 163)

      LoL: Getting started with Pantheon

      February 4, 2010 /

      PantheonThis post is not meant to be a full on guide for Pantheon, just a quick selection of tips that I’ve found useful in my time with the hero. I’ve probably logged about 25 games with him so far and been highly successful for the most part. I think Riot did a great job with champ, definitely the best I’ve seen from any of the newer toons, anyway.

      The thing you need to understand, and by understand I mean completely internalize so that it is second nature, is that Pantheon is pretty squishy. Despite having a huge shield and a very cool passive, he can still get his socks rocked if you aren’t paying attention. Think of him like a Master Yi and you should be just fine.

      In the early game, I take Spear Shot as my first skill every time unless I’m going for a 3-man or 5-man gank. It’s a great harassing skill, is extremely cheap at any level, and gives you a farming method against ranged champs. From there it’s 1 rank of stun and then maxing Heartseeker. Stay with me.

      A lot of people say to max stun first because it lowers the cooldown. It’s a decent idea, but at max rank the CD is still greater than 10 seconds, meaning you’ll probably only get one off before your opponent is in tower range. While Heartseeker has a longer cooldown, it deals double damage to champions and can be devastating at early levels.

      I’ll leave you with an idea for getting some early game kills: It’s all about saving your stun for the last minute. You really need to make it count. Start off by running in with a Spear Shot and getting some melee work done. If you have exhaust, blow it early and get some smacks in. Just keep up the melee until your target starts to run. That’s when you pop the stun and Heartseeker away. At that point he should be low enough that Spear Shot takes him to 15% health and you crit for the kill.

      Check back soon for a complete Pantheon guide.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL: Gragas buff is on the way

      February 4, 2010 /

      Gragas the Rabblerouser.If you’ve played any games as Gragas you’ve probably felt pretty underwhelmed. I know I have. Generally, I like to give a new toon a chance to shine, but Gragas really can’t, and it comes down to his lack of internal synergy.

      I realize that sounds like something from a Six Sigma retreat on 30 Rock so I’ll try to clarify. Gragas suffers because his skills are a weird mix of AP and physical damage. While some at Riot contend that he does best with a health/physica DPS build, the player community is frustrated with where that puts his AP scaling skills, most notably Barrel Roll and his ultimate.

      Luckily, Riot has seen the light. Gragas will soon be receiving a buff per red posts on the forums. I’ll be interested to see how much, though. As it stands I think he’s fine for the early game, but he really suffers mid to late. Buff him the wrong way and suddenly he’s too big early and starts to feel just right late.

      For what they got wrong with Gragas, they got completely right with Pantheon. I am completely in love with that Spartan bastard.

      league of legends, News, PC, Strategy

      LoL: Avoid your matchmaking woes

      February 3, 2010 /

      Annie nuking Morgana.No, this is not a post to encourage queue dodging. This is not a rant about matchmaking. It’s just a quick little guide on getting the most enjoyment from the game, particularly if you’re new and want to play with some friends.

      For starters, I’ve been in this situation a lot lately. I have two friends with whom I regularly run arranged team games. One is over level 20 while the other is in his high teens. Unfortunately, our pairing makes it difficult to find a team of similar level/skill. Some games we get stomped, the others we do the stomping. Out of five games this evening we only had one that was at all close. Here’s how Riot explained the situation to another user on the forums who was experiencing similar difficulty:

      I am going to strongly advocate that you start a practice game for you and your friends until he gets a better command of the game. By grouping with him in MM on one of his first games you’re presenting matchmaking with a decision:

      1) Either place players of level 13+ into newbie island, where the level of play is appropriate to your friend’s skill level, but the two of you, as experience players will be extremely dominant.

      or

      2) Place your friend into the regular player pool, where it is going to attempt to match you against a similar premade. If there isn’t a premade of similar construction in MM, which is unlikely, given the level (and probably Elo) disparity between yourself and your friend who is brand new, you’re much more likely to end up with a mismatch.

      The key part of that post is “practice games.” You still get XP and IP, albeit at a reduced rate, but you can choose what level players you’ll see and whether or not you want to play. In my case, since we have 3, we can even premade some Twisted Treeline, which would be a lot of fun. It’s not a bad way to get around landsliding in matchmaking and the more people that look in that practice queue, the easier it will be to find games.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL patch day: Servers are live

      February 2, 2010 /

      Gragas the Rabble Rouser.If you’ve been anxiously logging in every twenty minutes to check the servers you can stop your wait. Everything’s back up and running with the reported changes in place. As of this writing the store isn’t functioning, so I haven’t been able to pick up Pantheon just yet.

      I am looking forward to a lot of the changes, though. As a Gangplank player I was glad to see the change to Parrrley in that it now applies Grog Soaked Wound. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crit someone to a sliver of health just to watch him run off. There is a strange bug in his attack animation wherein every few attacks he points his gun at the target and it clicks as though you’ve tried to fire Parrrley and it didn’t go off.

      I will miss that 10% extra crit damage from my runes, though it’s not a terrible nerf. I’m looking forward to giving it a go on Pantheon. I’ve got a feeling that Heartseeker Strike will be a crazy opener most people won’t expect for a few days.

      And then there’s Gragas. I’ve not played him yet so I don’t have much to say other than this: he’s HUGE. His skills seem to be balanced just about right for a tank – nice control with just enough damage to overbalance a fight. I’ll have to experiment with some builds later in the day.

      Development, league of legends, News

      LoL: Is top 500 play worth it?

      February 1, 2010 /

      Anivia.I found an interesting post last night that asked what it takes to be a top-tier player. The consensus is that somewhere around 50 games over .500 you’ll start to see names from the top 500 player list, provided you’ve played a couple hundred games. I’m not quite to that 50+ mark, but I know from the way my losses go that I could get there if I was willing to play someone like TF or Twitch repeatedly to carry teams over the edge. For me, though, it’s just not worth it.

      A big part of the reason I play LoL is for the competition. After graduating college it has only gotten harder to put together a competitive game of basketball or volleyball. Most of the time pickup games degenerate into friendly matches among less-than-fit friends. It’s not a bad thing, but it doesn’t fulfill that competitive desire. There are rare occasions, though, when a friend brings a friend and suddenly we have a really solid game going.

      LoL is the same way for me. When I have those 70-80 minute games I have a blast, but they are the exception. Most of the time I’m watching teammates feed 1-5 and leave (happened to me like 25 minutes ago) or try an AP Gangplank build because a friend said the ults were lolrape. So much of the competition in this game is out of my hands that I’m content to be happy with the good games and just try to play well for myself in the bad ones.

      There is one thing that could change my mind: matchmaking. I know everyone is always bitching about it in the forums, but this is really the thing that keeps me from caring about top 500 play. In the past week I’ve been paired with players under level 15 on multiple occasions. I’ve been level 30 for at least a month now with more than 400 games under my belt. These aren’t smurf accounts either, where players have boosted ELO by trashing new players. These are players who, like the aforementioned, try building Ashe for AP (not kidding, this has happened to me) or spend 15 minutes building a Heimer turret nest in a remote patch of brush and then luring the overleveled opponent and promptly dying (again, actually happened). As long as I’m getting paired with this type of player there is no incentive to get to higher play. The landslide will likely be that much worse, if only because higher tier players are better at exploiting the unskilled.

      I’m also put off by the method for achieving the ELO necessary for top tier play. When I first started, I played a lot of TF. He was fun, felt strong, and helped me win a lot of games. I’ve since stopped, mostly because it just isn’t enjoyable for me to exploit a broken toon for gain. I really do like a challenge, and nothing about his playstyle feels challenging to me. The same can be said for Twitch, who can easily roll over a team with very little farm. For me, it’s not a fun way to play (okay, every now and again it’s pretty fun), and if the end result is bad matchmaking of a higher order, I’m going to stick to playing toons I enjoy.

      league of legends, PC

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