Category: league of legends (Page 42 of 163)

      Champ of the Week: Lee Sin

      July 18, 2011 /

      As promised, this week’s Champ of the Week is someone I’m truly bad with, someone I haven’t been able to master since his release several months back, and someone who consistently dominates me in lane. This week’s Champ of the Week is none other than Lee Sin, the Blind Monk.

      Honestly, I’m not sure what my problem is when it comes to Lee Sin. I’m probably running the wrong runes or the wrong skills or some combination of all things above, but I just can’t get him down. I had a somewhat decent game with him the other day but that was owed mostly to a solid performance from the rest of my team and the fact that I was able to kill steal enough to get a decent farm. The rest of the time I’ve felt like a fish that’s been thrown from a 30-story building, flapping my flippers all the way down. It’s not pleasant.

      I have seen several Lee Sin players rock, though, and he’s an absolute demon if he can get ahead. I’ll be focusing on build strategies and aggressive early game tactics to maximize his late game potential. It seems to me that consistent early ganks from Lee are hard to stop, thanks to high mobility and an energy system that offers virtually unlimited gank potential.

      If you have tips or requests, drop them in the comments. Otherwise, check back later in the week for more impressions or catch a game with me at “The Wiggin Boy.”

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

      FG LoL Mondays are on – 9:30PM EST

      July 18, 2011 /

      FG LoL Mondays

      We are on for games tonight. If you’re interested in joining your fellow readers for a few games, jump into the “Fearless Gamer” chat room in the League of Legends client around 9:15 or so. We’ll get started at 9:30 in whatever we have available based on the number of players that can make it.

      If you can’t get into the chat room for some reason, you can add me at “The Wiggin Boy.” Hope to see you tonight!

      FG LoL Mondays, league of legends

      Champ of the Week: Soraka Wrapup

      July 17, 2011 /

      soraka_splash_0

      The forums provided a serendipitous thread necro for me to wrap up the Soraka Champ of the Week series. In the thread linked here, Xypherous lays out some of the design problems around heals, which I think is a decent place to kick off the Soraka discussion. Soraka is strong as most every other healer is strong – they all remove attrition from a game.

      Healing is a really tough mechanic to balance for a game like League of Legends. In order for the healer to have any fun whatsoever, the heal needs to do something during the laning phase, which usually means giving it a somewhat short cooldown. Later in the game it needs to scale in some way to be remotely useful, which means AP builds can be both viable and infuriating. In short, heals don’t really work. Even if a heal could truly provide a judgement call for a player, heals just happen too often to really be balanced.

      That’s essentially what I saw with Soraka. If my team was willing to sit back, not rush fights if the enemy ignites were up, or start a poking war, we won. We won easily, too. Even in games where I’ve built a Deathfire or a Guinsoo with Soraka, the wins have been decisive. There’s not much more to say about her.

      If I could change one thing about Soraka, it would be Starfall. Though the spell is occasionally lulzy and provides a decent debuff, it doesn’t have a practical range for teamfighting. It’s decent for farming, but again, it suffers from a short range. I’d love to see Soraka get something like Lux’s Lucent Singularity, a skill that could slow in an area on the ground. She would probably need a slight heal tweak due to the increased lane power, but I think she would be more fun.

      That does it for Soraka week. Check back tomorrow for next week’s Champ of the Week. It’s back to someone I’m not particularly good with. What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment.

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

      Wukong, the Monkey King next to join the League

      July 16, 2011 /

      Remember that preview we saw for a character called the Monkey King back in April? It looks like he’s finally ready to join the League. Riot put together a preview comic as his sneak peek, but we know very little about the role he’ll actually play.

      I’m guessing from his size that he won’t be a Tanky DPS, but that’s really just hopeful thinking. Also, the lore for the Monkey King makes him out to be much more trickster than he is straight warrior, but this isn’t necessarily a direct adaption of the Eastern myth.

      Scoot on over to the official forums to see the whole thing, and in case you missed it, here’s a link to the art preview Riot posted a few months back.

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      Leona Impressions

      July 15, 2011 /

      Valkyrie Leona

      Leona’s mid-week release has been messing with my schedule a bit, but I’ve still been able to sneak in a few games with her here and there, enough at least to give you an impression post. Leona has all the skills necessary to be a powerful force in the game, there’s just one problem – she doesn’t have a lane.

      The current metagame is focused around leveling an AP carry and either a high burst ranged carry (Corki, basically) or a bruiser in the mid and top lanes and allowing the pure ranged carry to farm bottom with a support. The support sustains the carry for a big farm so that the team can scale in to late game. Unfortunately, Leona isn’t very good in a solo lane. She doesn’t farm creeps well, she doesn’t harass well without another player with her, and she sure as shit can’t jungle. For competitive play, that leaves her one place to go – bottom lane – which means the carry is left without a healer, hoping to snag a few kills in the early game thanks to Leona’s crowd control. There’s one giant problem with that strategy, though.

      Have you ever noticed how low the kill counts are in competitive matches? Competitive matches are about safety for the majority of the game – players ward, every team brings support, every team packs Clairvoyance – with a focus on objectives and the occasional teamfight. That’s not really where Leona shines. Leona is about having an aggressive lane and teamfighting often, using her low-cooldown CC skills to pick apart the enemy team. In a metagame that is essentially a farm-off, she doesn’t have a place.

      That said, I’m hoping the metagame can make a shift some time in the near future, because Leona is a lot of fun when I can actually use her abilities. Leona is a tank in the purest sense of the word. She has a boatload of CC but fairly weak damage, especially compared to champions like Jarvan. Riot got so many things right about her kit I’m wondering if we’re about to see a very significant shift in the game’s design. She doesn’t do crazy damage, she doesn’t even do any kind of resistance debuff. She doesn’t push well, though she can occasionally set up a push with a tower dive. She doesn’t farm well. She’s only there to lock down targets so that the rest of her team can put together some kills.

      I would love to see the game-extending support metagame die in favor of an action-creating CC/Carry lane on the bottom. I think Leona has the kind of kit to make that possible, but until the passive support game gets nerfed, I don’t think we’ll see Leona in a ton of games.

      Champions, league of legends, Patches

      « Older posts Newer posts »

      © 2026 Fearless Gamer

      Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑