Category: league of legends (Page 60 of 163)

      FG Minecraft Mondays are on – 8:00PM EST

      May 9, 2011 /

      minecraft_mondays

      It’s patch week for League of Legends, which means time for Minecraft Mondays once again. I’m in the process of trying out yet another new server. I’ve been bouncing around a lot, but I haven’t yet found a server with a good mix of rulesets and administrative involvement, at least not until now.

      I’m currently playing on a server called Thunderdome. It has an impressive spawn town – the best I’ve seen actually – a very active administrative team, a no-grief policy but with pvp thrown in the mix for fun. It’s an unlimited map, which some people don’t care for, but I’ve been looking to find a long-term place to play, somewhere I can hopefully stretch my legs for several months. If I took all of the structures I’ve made in Minecraft since I started playing in January I’m sure I’d start to feel cramped on a lot of maps. This server gives me the chance to do that.

      Also, there is no whitelist, no application, nothing like that. Just log on to thunderdome-mc.com and complete the nifty quiz they have in their starting area. Their town has a full sewer system, hidden dungeons you can complete for rewards, a hot-air balloon tour, and a fully automated rail line for travel both in town and out. It’s a mind-boggling achievement and absolutely worth exploring.

      If you want to play some Minecraft tonight, log on to thunderdome-mc.com at 8PM EST. You can message me by typing /tell TheWuggler and I’ll come to spawn town and help you find your way out if you like.

      Also, don’t forget about the Vayne live preview tonight. Riot will be showing her off at 10:00PM EST.

      FG Minecraft Mondays, league of legends, Minecraft

      Captain, there’s an anomaly in the system!

      May 7, 2011 /

      My attempt to get a ranked win with all 75 champions is going well, at least for what I expected. I’ve managed to pick up a few first-attempt wins, which feels really good. Karthus was a one shot, as were Eve and Rumble. I expected the latter two to be easy, but the Karthus win was a pleasant surprise.

      Ryze and Alistar continue to give me trouble. I’ve had solid starts with both champions in several games, but my teammates just can’t find a way to work with another. It’s painful.

      I also had one extremely frustrating game last night in which I was paired with an unranked Malphite, even though he hadn’t duo queued with anyone. You can see the teams in the screenshot above. My own team’s rankings, in order from top to bottom, is as follows:

      1324
      1321
      1337
      1320
      Unranked

      The enemy team, again from top to bottom, was:

      1356
      1353
      1350
      1376
      1315

      The last two players on the enemy team also duo queued together, which I’ve always seen as an advantage, especially when the two players are so close in ELO. This sort of thing just shouldn’t happen in the matchmaking system. Even if that unranked player was lying for some reason and actually did duo with another player, we were outmatched as far as ELO is concerned. I know ELO isn’t a very good gauge of player skill, but when a player is dumped into a match 120 points above his ELO, against higher-rated duo queue to boot, well, I expect about the outcome I got. He bought Ninja Tabi against a very limited physical team and “initiated” by ulting one of the enemy players at a time, most often Xin Zhao. It was a mess.

      Like I said, though, this is going better than expected. I just lost another with Ryze, bringing my total attempts with him to three. We’ll see if I have more tim this afternoon to try again.

      Champions, league of legends

      Vayne skill list announced

      May 6, 2011 /
      attachment-4-php_

      We now have the official “New Champion Approaches” post for Vayne, giving us a look at the skillset for Riot’s latest champion. I’m most certainly not excited to see yet another ability attempting to address the Tanky DPS situation but it is interesting to see ranged DPS get the kind of mobility that could mean survival in many cases. More on that later – let’s get to the skills:

      Night Hunter (Passive): Vayne ruthlessly hunts evil-doers. She gains bonus Movement Speed when moving toward nearby enemy champions.

      Tumble: Vayne tumbles, maneuvering to carefully place her next shot. She rolls toward the cursor and her next attack deals bonus damage.

      Silver Bolts: Vayne tips her bolts with a rare metal, toxic to evil things. The third consecutive attack or ability against the same target deals a percentage of the target’s maximum Health as bonus true damage. (Max damage vs. Monsters is capped)

      Condemn: Vayne draws a heavy crossbow from her back, and fires a huge bolt at her target, dealing damage and knocking them back. If they collide with terrain, they are impaled, dealing bonus damage and stunning them.

      Final Hour (Ultimate): Readying herself for an epic confrontation, Vayne gains increased Attack Damage, stealth during Tumble, and quadruple the bonus Movement Speed from Night Hunter.

      I’m going to be curious to see how Vayne plays. At first I thought condemn might feel like a bit of a throwaway skill, and chances are it probably will in a lot of situations, but I also think her passive coupled with her dash could make it much more usable than Poppy’s Heroic Charge.

      As I said above, I really do not like addressing metagame issues with abilities. Those abilities will almost surely need a rework if that metagame shifts, which brings up some ugly questions about Riot’s intent for the metagame. Are we sticking with tanky DPS for a while? If so, are the loads of older champions who have slipped from viability going to see reworks? Vayne has a couple skills that vaguely remind me of Tristana, a champion I haven’t seen produce stats in a ranked game in ages. This is all to say nothing of the fact that true damage is an ugly beast to manage. Can anyone think of another true damage champion on live that Riot has been unable to balance? Anyone?

      I’m also interested to see how Vayne’s ult will play out. Riot said in the announcement thread that the ult has a “very short” cooldown. A steroid ult is rarely fun, but with the escapability offered by her knockback and her dash, she could be great at kiting. I’m also guessing she’ll be able to dash into a lane Shaco-style with the Tumble ult mechanic, which could be very cool.

      Vayne looks to have the best ranged DPS kit of any character released remotely recently, maybe overall. Watch for the live preview Monday night at 10:00PM EST.

      Champions, Development, league of legends, News

      A ranked win with every champion

      May 6, 2011 /

      soraka_splash_1

      I often find myself short on things to do in League of Legends. I like a ton of champions so I’m constantly switching things up, trying new builds, playing silly comps. Even that gets old eventually, which is why I’d really like to see Riot flesh out its statistics sometime, oh, in the next millenium. In the meantime, I’m working with what I’ve got, which unfortunately means ranked stats.

      Even the ranked stat system is pretty slim in terms of its usefulness. I still check up on my different champions here and there, though. For instance, I recently started loving Veigar, so I’ve been pulling him into ranked on occasion. I’m currently at an 80 percent win rate (4/5) with a KDA ratio of 5.8:1.

      There is one stat I would really like to round out, for no reason other than I think it would be cool. I currently have ranked wins with 65 of the 75 champions in play. My hope is to get to 75, though that likely won’t happen before next week (especially if my games keep going the way they have been), so it will probably have to be 76/76 at the earliest. The current list of champions I have yet to win with is as follows:

      Alistar
      Eve (really thought I did this but apparently not)
      Jarvan
      Karma
      Karthus
      Lee Sin
      Maokai
      Rumble
      Ryze
      Soraka

      It’s not a bad mix of champions, though they are mostly my least favorites. I like Ryze, but he doesn’t fit a lot of comps very well. Rumble, Jarvan, Karma, Maokai, Lee Sin, and Soraka are all champions I just flat out don’t enjoy playing, which leaves me Eve, Alistar, and Karthus. I thought I had an Alistar win coming today but my team just fell apart. Our Kassadin was 0-11 and yet blaming the rest of the team.

      I know a lot of you guys don’t play ranked. For those that do, how many champs have you won with?

      Champions, league of legends

      Is LoL headed toward a Black King Bar?

      May 5, 2011 /

      Alistar.

      With the rise of tanky DPS came another frustrating aspect of the metagame: chained crowd control. Many of the tanky characters in League of Legends are equipped with one or more CC abilities, be they slows, silences, knockups, snares, or stuns. I’ve played against many teams recently in which my deaths have felt like a one-shot, from 100 percent health to nothing without a chance to fire a single shot. That sort of stunlock mechanic is extremely frustrating in a MOBA, especially if you’ve chosen a champion with limited mobility (there are things from which even Flash can’t save you).

      With the rise of tanky toons and the inherent rise of CC, I wonder if we won’t see some sort Black King Bar brought over from DotA. For those that don’t know, Black King Bar (BKB) was an item that granted the bearer magical immunity for a limited amount of time on activation. With BKB you couldn’t be stunned, slowed, feared – none of the CC options – but you also didn’t take any magic damage. Obviously this poses a balance problem for those one-and-done mages (Veigar comes to mind). With that type of item, we’d sort of be back to Flash breaking projectiles, which isn’t very fun.

      Another option would be the introduction of some sort of diminishing returns on repeated CC on a target. Even giving Quicksilver Sash the Cleanse treatment – allowing it to reduce CC for for several seconds after use – would give players more options for dealing with the current metagame. Whatever the case, we need something to avoid the incredibly frustrating stunlock deaths.

      Editorial, league of legends

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