Category: PC (Page 9 of 18)

      LoL: Power of the premade

      January 25, 2010 /

      Anivia looking scary.You’ll see me talk about solo queue games a lot here because that’s where I spend at least half my time. Being a freelancer, I can split my play time throughout the day when a lot of people are at work or elsewhere. When I have the chance, though, I’ll always choose to premade.

      If you’re new to the game, pay attention to the people you play with. Chances are, if you’re playing a few games in a row, you may end up with a few of the same players. Try to pick out the most coordinated players with the best communication. As an example, I was on a 5-game losing streak today. Fortunately I pulled a big Anivia play and beat a team of decent players with support from a good Mundo. That decent team, the guys I beat, wanted to friend up and play together.

      What happened next almost shouldn’t be talked about. We were stomping people so hard there were multiple rage quits most games we played and it was all because of coordination. Having Vent or Skype only compounds things.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL Basics: Cooldown reduction

      January 23, 2010 /

      Annie nuking Nunu.Today’s LoL Basics post is a quick look at an essential stat for casters: cooldown reduction. It’s one of the best ways to increase your DPS at every stage of the game and can be very easy to max out.

      Cooldown reduction, as the name suggests, reduces the amount of time between spell casts. Take Karthus, for instance. His ultimate starts at a 180 second cooldown. That’s a long time to wait, especially if your team is playing aggressively. If you’re going with a Mejai’s Soulstealer, you want to at least be picking up assists as often as you can, and an ult is great way to do that in other lanes.

      A lot of items offer cooldown reduction, not to mention the runes you can buy. Frozen Heart is 25% reduction. Soul Shroud is 15%. Let’s say you have both those items on Karthus. Cooldown reduction works additively, so you’re at 40% reduction. For the 180 second ult, that means you can now cast every 108 seconds, which is really nice.

      There is a caveat, though: cooldown reduction caps at 40%, meaning you can’t have any more than that. If you’ve specced into utility and offense for your masteries, you likely have 9% reduction. My own rune page puts me at 10% more, which means 4% of the CD reduction on Frozen Heart is lost. Granted, it has plenty of other benefits, but you should try to be conscious of how much of an item becomes worthless for you.

      Don’t forget, you can also get the golem buff for an extra 25% CD reduction and some mana regen. Before taking the buff, though, consider whether you’re the best person to wear the buff on your team. If another player will be capable of more DPS, pass it off.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL Basics: Crit chance or crit damage?

      January 22, 2010 /

      Warwick showing TF some love.Today I’ve got another rune discussion for you, branching off the magic penetration guide I made the other day. If you’re a physical DPS player – Ashe, Warwick, Twitch – you’re going to be going after critical strike items, typically culminating with Infinity Edge. Few things are quite as fun as burning down a Fiddlesticks with a few quick crits. So how should you spend your IP: critical strike chance runes or critical damage?

      There are two sides of the debate. For critical damage, the idea is that you are increasing your damage by means only available on two items in the game: Sword of the Occult and Infinity Edge. Those are the only method by which you can increase your critical damage and one, the Sword of the Occult, can be fairly unreliable. If you’re a Shaco player, crit damage can be invaluable as it increases the damage caused by Deceive. Early game you can nearly one-shot players if you have a full crit damage page.

      But crit damage runes are expensive. Very expensive. The crit chance folks would argue that crit chance has wider application and can more effective swing the early game in your favor. Bumping your crit chance by as much as 20% means you should win almost every stand and fight situation at level 1, and your harassment gets a big boost too. It’s easy to scare someone off with a few early 120+ hits. As abundant as critical chance items are, you could easily make the argument that runes allow you to forego some of those items in favor of damage, which could in turn lead to more Bloodthirster stacks, which gets very scary for the other team.

      For my IP points, I’d go for crit chance. They’re cheap, provide a solid benefit, and can help push you toward a few more wins until you’ve got the IP to upgrade to crit damage.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL: Controlling the late-game

      January 21, 2010 /

      League of Legends tower.I couldn’t sleep last night so I decided to jump into a game of LoL to relax. I’ve been on a bit of a losing streak recently so I took my own advice, working the basics to try to sneak a win. Lo and behold, I was farming well, racking up some assists, and slowly turning my TF into a nuking machine.

      And for once, it was a fairly even match. We had myself as TF, Malphite, Alistar, Veigar, and Annie – a little low on the phys dps side of things but we were playing well. The other side was Twitch, Blitzcrank, Katarina, Annie and one other I can’t seem to remember. My team struggled early, but we picked things up around 14 and starting pushing towers. For the most part we were fine – our Malphite and Alistar were coordinating well and DPS was focusing targets. We did have one problem, though: Twitch.

      Despite my constant begging, our tanks just would notbuy an elixir. Sure, there was my ultimate, and I was blowing it for every team fight, but Twitch soon got wise, would flash in and invis out. By the end of the game we were all yelling at each other, everyone blamed for not focusing Twitch. Meanwhile, he continued to get double and triple kills and BD every tower we had.

      The point of this story is that the late-game is completely dependent on how you play your opponent. By 45 minutes or so, you should be heavily farmed, so it really starts to come down to strategy versus the other team. Make sure you stop to think, “what else could I be doing to help win those team fights?” More often than not, it isn’t about DPS. It’s about controlling abilities – the enemies’ – saving stuns to interrupt ultimates, focusing targets that have big AOE damage, and shutting down the invis players that turn a 3v3 you could normally win into a massacre the other way.

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

      LoL: Coming back from a losing streak

      January 17, 2010 /

      Ashe is about to die.I have a fairly large base of friends playing League of Legends now, mostly thanks to my shameless plugs every time we’ve spoken over the last several months. Of those people I was the first to hit 30, so I get asked most of the questions regarding strategy, hero choice, etc. The big question of late, though, is what to do when you get into a losing streak.

      Games like LoL tend to ebb and flow quite a bit. I often feel unstoppable for as many as ten games, only to turn around and lose the next ten because of sloppy play and unskilled teammates. Things are never completely out of your hands, though, and a little focus can save you a lot of frustration.

      First off, take a look at your team comp. It sounds really basic, but it’s a mistake I see from almost every team. You cobble together a few wins and think you must be so skilled you can win with any comp. Not so, and it’s usually the base reason behind a streak of losses. Make sure you have a balance of range, nuke, dps, and meat.

      You also need to take a look at lane comps. A balanced team means nothing if you have a lane with no disable. Try to put at least one disable in each lane and if you have spares, pair one lane for ganking. That lane can be responsible for pushing tower first and then roaming to help the team.

      Lastly, take a look at your summoner spells and tune them to account for you team’s weaknesses. If you’ll have trouble laning early, consider Fortify on at least 2 champs. Exhaust is great for shutting down the enemy Twitch or Shaco in team fights, and Cleanse can help save you in big team fights. Avoid relying on spells like Flash and Heal because they can quickly turn into a crutch that you’ll be unsure how to play without.

      Once you’re back on your feet, try to at least keep a few of these things in mind. If you have a regular team to roll with you can be a little sloppy, but playing pugs, you need every advantage you can get.

      PC, Strategy

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