Category: league of legends (Page 17 of 163)

Champ of the Week: Ragnarok

November 3, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

olaf_splash_1

I titled this mid-week Olaf feature “Ragnarok” because it’s the skill that received his most significant buff in the last patch, but also because the change really didn’t do a whole lot for Olaf. I won’t lie, the Ragnarok change is nice, but realistically speaking, most Olaf players know when to ult and when to hold on to the skill. Now it basically serves as a way to soak a CC skill for teamfights or escapes.

Other than that, I really started to enjoy Olaf once I got out of the jungle. Olaf is a solid solo lane champion. He’s fairly durable, mostly because any respectable build involves some amount of health, he deals excellent damage with Reckless Swing, and 1v1 he is a pure terror, even for some ranged champions.

I will say this – Olaf does not get an exciting build. When I’ve taken him solo top this week, I’ve purchased two, sometimes three gold-per-5 items (Philo, HoG, Avarice). Those don’t make for massive damage increases, but they do allow for a huge late-game farm. During the early game I pretty much rely on Reckless Swing to carry me through.

I do wish Reckless Swing scaled into late game in some way. The true damage is amazing early on, but when I’m staring down a 3500 HP Jarvan, my 340 true damage looks pretty weak.

I’m an Olaf believer, provided he can get a solo lane. I’ve had a couple problematic matchups, but hopefully I can talk a little more about that in my final video. Check back this weekend for the wrapup!

Champ of the Week, league of legends

olaf olaf abilities olaf buff olaf build olaf guide olaf nerf olaf skills ragnarok buff ragnarok change

Death recaps might finally get an update

November 2, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

If you’ve ever looked at a death recap in game, you’ve no doubt noticed that the recap doesn’t show all of the damage that killed you. Hell, it rarely shows 30 percent of your terminal damage. The system may finally be catching an update next patch according to a red post made late last night.

Wiksy, an Associate Software Engineer for Riot, said this:

I have some death recap changes that should come out next patch.
The system itself was in a pretty bad place, so it required changes from both code and design (thanks to Coronach who did all design-related changes). For example it did not have enough data to figure out where the damage actually came from, and the event array was not big enough so that it would be full before all relevant events were processed…
Anyway, please try death recap after next patch is out, and give me some feedback. It should at least make the damage source and numbers more accurate.

Let’s hope so. A big part of getting better with this game is being able to accurately assess what happened in a fight. I would love to see a WoW-style combat log implemented, but in the meantime a reworked death recap should do just fine.

Development, league of legends, News

client changes client update combat log damage log death recap death recap damage

Champ of the Week: Olaf

November 1, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

olaf_splash_2

I usually try to avoid champions that are overdue for remakes and tweaks, but Olaf just got a small buff so I thought it might be a good week for him. For the return of the Champ of the Week series I’ll be playing Olaf.

A long time ago I mused that Olaf might be an underwhelming version of Mundo. I don’t think that’s completely true, but I can still see the similarities and, consequently, Olaf’s shortcomings. Olaf is a champion I’ve never spent much time with, mostly because it takes so much farm for him to be enjoyable. Olaf’s basic kit is designed around having enough health to be missing 30-40% and still stay with a fight. That’s a lot of health, and it takes time to amass that kind of resilience, which is why I’m willing to state the following: Olaf shouldn’t jungle.

I know he can jungle. I know he’s an incredibly fast jungle. But he doesn’t make the kind of cash necessary to reach his potential if he jungles. His ganks aren’t strong enough to guarantee kill/assist gold, he doesn’t have the mobility, crowd control, or killing power to counter jungle effectively, and he requires too much farm to drop a lot of money on wards.

This isn’t just theorycraft, either. I played a couple games with Olaf today and, despite one successful match, I spent the rest of my game time wondering when I’d finally be farmed enough to keep up with my opponents. Answer: never. Without significant farm, Olaf doesn’t bring anything the table that another champion with similar qualities couldn’t do better.

I’ll be focusing on moving Olaf out of the jungle this week as much as possible. Where it seems to make sense I’ll also jungle with him to see if there’s anything worth saving, but for the most part I think my instincts are right on this one.

If you have suggestions drop them in the comments. Don’t forget to check back throughout the week for more Olaf impressions.

Champ of the Week, league of legends

laning olaf olaf olaf build olaf guide olaf jungle olaf lane olaf op olaf up ragnarok buff undertow

Shyvana Spotlight Impressions

November 1, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

The Shyvana Spotlight is out, as is the character, giving us the first look at the latest champion to join the League. I’m not surprised to see Trinity Force show up on the recommended build for her, but I did think it was cool to see a Guinsoo’s Rageblade on her. I can’t help but wonder if that will be the optimal build, or if players will just build the typical tanky build.

It’s hard to say how I feel about her based on the spotlight alone. She seemed to be doing decent damage, but she doesn’t have any of the more conventional nuke skills. She reminds me of Skarner in that way – appears to do solid damage without any really exciting skills.

I tend to avoid characters like Shyvana, mostly because I have trouble estimating just what I’ll be able to do in a fight. In a lot of the encounters in Phreak’s video I probably would have backed away from kills that he was able to secure. I’m not sure what it is about the slow trickle of death, but it just doesn’t turn me on.

I’m hoping to get a few games with her today to see how she actually feels. Check back for more on the League’s first dragon.

Champions, league of legends, News, Video

shyvana shyvana abilites shyvana buff shyvana nerf shyvana op shyvana release shyvana skills shyvana spotlight shyvana up

Is LoL approaching a ‘balanced’ state?

October 31, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Shyvana.

This week we’ll see the release of Shyvana, which also means a patch with some balance changes. The change lists on recent patches have been fairly light, which surprises me. For a while there it seemed like we would see significant changes to a wide range of champions. Lately, though, we’ve had tweaks to very few champions at a time. The most obvious reason would be that Riot is settling into what they feel is a balanced state of the game. It could also be that Riot saw that they were adding too many changes to the game along with frequent champion releases and wanted to scale back the effect of each patch. I’m betting on the first, though, at least for the time being.

I’m a little bummed out that the solution to current balance issues is an increase in HP and scaling for the underpowered characters. The health creep in League of Legends is a phenomenon I don’t really understand. It used to be unusual to see characters with 4000 HP but I see that all the time now, often more than once per game. I’m tired of Trinity Force. I’m tired of Warmog’s + Atma’s. I do think we have some hope, though, even if it’s a long shot.

For now, I’m hoping that once all of the melee looks the same, Riot will come through with a nice new kit of items or some serious mechanic change that makes the current bruiser build slightly less attractive. I would also like to see some more viable strategies come forward in the near future. One of the things I first liked about League was that it was less push-oriented than DotA. In DotA a lot of my games would come down to the team with the better push comp. In LoL, at least at this point, push comps don’t really exist. In fact, I haven’t seen a comp other than the standard objective-taking rig in a long time. The game has slowly morphed into a giant farm calculator, which was fun for a while but could really use a tune-up.

Summoner’s Rift needs new life – new strategies, new playstyles, new champions with interesting, game-changing mechanics. Even if the game could be perfectly balanced as it currently is, I would still be writing this post. I didn’t fall in love with MOBAs because they’re perfectly balanced tests of skill. I fell in love with this genre because it was all about adaptability. The game was about using one skillset against another, very different skillset and attempting to be successful, whether that meant pushing or teamfighting or controlling the map. I think LoL has lost some of that magic. Here’s hoping Riot can bring it back.

Editorial, league of legends, Patches