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Is the early game too passive?

June 4, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

If you watched the Dreamhack qualifiers, you may have noticed just how passive the early game is. It didn’t take Dreamhack to reveal that fact, though. Think of the last game in which a player died before the five minute mark and wasn’t called a noob. Yeah, I can’t think of one either. The early game in League of Legends has become extremely passive, a fifteen minute race to 100-minion counts with the occasional dragon. There’s a great thread on the forums discussing the issue, which I’ll leave you to read at your leisure. I think the poster, ParoX, makes some great points about contributing factors, but I think there’s another system in play that adds to the passive early game. Early game deaths are just too penalizing.

A couple months ago, Riot adjusted death timers in the early game to make deaths less punishing, but I’m still seeing towers drop before the five minute mark fairly regularly. When an early death means the loss of early lane protection, players tend to be much more conservative in what they will attempt.

A big chunk of the penalty can be attributed to the strength of junglers. Early ganks often happen when a jungler makes a move, turning a lane fight into a 3v2. If a kill succeeds, three champions are now pushing a turret that is often not well protected. If the tower drops, the game shifts dramatically, especially for the team that lost the tower. Because junglers rely on jungle creeps for XP, those players get territorial, leaving few places for the beaten lane to farm. This also opens the winning lane combo up for roaming, increasing the passivity of other lanes by presenting more threats from the brush near each lane.

I think one thing Riot should seriously consider is a nerf to early game jungling, at least at the rate jungling can currently be accomplished. The fact that junglers can keep pace and in some cases outlevel lanes, all in the cover of fog of war is kinda silly. What I would really like to see is a move toward roaming instead of jungling. Unlike jungling, at least for many junglers, roaming has some serious risk. The roamer loses XP or leeches from his lanes, can miss kills, can botch tower dives, and certainly loses quite a bit of farm by leaving a lane. As it stands, junglers suffer very few of the consequences without a concerted effort by their opponents, and even then jungle fights are fairly risky for invaders.

I’m glad to see RiotStatikk paying close attention to the current thread on the forums, but I’m worried by the caveat he placed at the end of his call for help: “I will be reading this thread. Identify what you see as the root problem and offer solutions on how to solve it with the least game-shaking changes possible.” I think it might be time for the game to get a decent shake. In fact, this is the perfect time to make some big changes. Season Two is forthcoming, hopefully giving people a chance to tune up their game and make some positive movement on the ladder. I can hardly imagine a better time to make some significant changes to prevalent player strategy and game mechanics.

Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

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More Orianna thoughts

June 3, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

Orianna’s playstyle is engaging enough that I’ve been spending a decent amount of time with her, enough to have some additional thoughts about her just a day after my impressions post. It’s tough to help myself – she’s just so much fun. The ball mechanic makes for an active and powerful lane phase that I find much more interesting than most of the characters in the game.

Orianna is a return to the poke style metagame, and I’ve actually had the most success with her when I can zone an enemy back to his turret. You’ll definitely need to have some regen, but using the ball to basically sweep the lane can keep an opponent at his turret while you stand outside the turret’s range. There is one limiting factor: mana.

I have huge mana problems on Orianna, which is why I think you pretty much have to run with RoA/Archangel’s. That build also has the added benefit of being very consistent. I’ve tried rolling with Soulstealer and it just doesn’t feel as good. Because Orianna’s base damage is a little on the low side, I feel like it’s necessary to do everything I possibly can to make sure she scales consistently.

Champions, league of legends, Patches

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Orianna impressions

June 2, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve spent a decent number of games playing Orianna now, most of which have been really enjoyable. The playstyle of the ball pet is unique but more importantly, it’s a lot of fun. With enough mana and cooldown reduction, Orianna can utterly dominate a lane. The one problem is that it seems to take her quite a few casts to be able to do that, and very few other casters rely on that mechanic. It often results in her getting more than she gives in the lane, and in a duo lane she doesn’t seem to scale quickly enough to keep up with bruiser damage, which is really her downfall.

I realize this may be an odious comparison, but I laned against Vlad in a game early today and totally worked him. I was placing my ball deep in the field (yes, I know, but there isn’t another way to write this) and basically blocking him away from creeps, using Command: Attack and the occasional Dissonance for extra burst. I was up 30 kills at one point, and then he hit level 7. After a recall he had a revolver and it was all over. He caught back up on kills and ended up carrying the game.

Vlad is a special case, but there are other casters, and certainly other champions, with that kind of laning potential. I played as Vayne against an Orianna yesterday and smoked her. Her 60 damage at level one was no match for the 105 my Tumble was putting out.

I’m not going to call for buffs just yet, because I think Orianna has a very strong lane phase, which can help her get the farm she needs. I think her big problem is the design of the ball in combination with her passive. Orianna can harass just about anyone in a 1v1 situation, but to deal maximum damage she needs to get in a few auto attacks, which means soaking creeps, something she totally cannot afford to do. Her ball gives her excellent harass from a distance, but she has to be fairly close in order to get those auto attacks in, which don’t hit all that much harder than a normal attack, especially early in the game.

It gets a little easier once she has a couple hundred AP, but even then she doesn’t seem to hit as hard as Annie or Anivia. I’ve seen some math that suggests she has very high burst, and while I think that’s true against the squishy targets, she doesn’t really seem to hold up one the enemy has a little HP/MR.

For now, I think Orianna is a solid choice against a fairly soft team, and she’s a total blast to play, which helps a lot. I’m going to have to do some more testing on that passive to see what I think, but for now I think shifting some of her damage to her auto attacks makes her early game feel very lackluster.

Reviews

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Orianna released today

June 1, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

This morning, the servers came up, bringing Orianna to live play. I certainly wasn’t expecting a patch, though it didn’t include anything other than her release. I haven’t really had a chance to play her much, so I’ll give some basic impressions and instead point you to the spotlight above.

I think Riot did an amazing job with her animations. She looks good, her spells all look fairly different (though I wouldn’t mind a bit more fanfare for her shield), and the animations are spot on for her basic movement. The voice acting is also excellent (definitely a little Portal-esque as a friend pointed out). To this point, though, I haven’t seen a lot from her in terms of damage.

The problem mostly seems to be with the base damage on her abilities. Granted, a portion of her damage has been allocated to her passive, but even with a load of AP, her auto attacks don’t seem to hit particularly hard. I think a good point of comparison is Lux, who deals significant damage with her abilities and then procs a nice chunk of damage if she can land one auto attack. Orianna might be great in situations where she is overfarmed and can stand and auto attack an enemy to stack up her passive, but with just an attack or two, it doesn’t feel like it does much.

The real joy of Orianna is her support skills. Dissonance is an awesome speed buff for allies and adds a nice slow to opponents, and her ult has that perfect reward feeling when it’s played right. Hopefully I have the time for a few more games with her today. Check back either today or tomorrow for my full impressions.

Champions, league of legends, News, Patches, Video

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Does LoL need an ‘easy mode?’

May 31, 2011 / Jeff Morgan

I have a couple good friends that I frequently join up with to play Twisted Treeline. It’s not a perfect experience by any means, but it allows us to play a draft mode together and the games are relatively short. The best part about TT is definitely game length, but the map leaves an awful lot to be desired in terms of balance.

The time issue actually carries over to Summoner’s Rift for me. I rarely queue for 5v5 unless I know I have an hour to spend and even 3s can take 40 minutes if the game goes long. That’s a pretty long chunk of time to commit to a game, especially if it ends up being a loss. I’m sure we’ve all had games that are going so poorly that there’s no hope of victory but teammates hang on and refuse to surrender. Those types of games make me long for a quicker experience.

DotA had an “easy mode” toggle that could be used with each gametype, granting bonus gold per second and I believe extra gold for towers. It increased the pace of the game by allowing players to passively reach a level of farm more quickly, similar to the way Twisted Treeline generates per-second gold faster than Summoner’s Rift. I actually think it would be cool to have an “easy mode” playlist in League of Legends, a mode in which the XP and gold rewards were tuned so that 30 minutes looked like 70 minutes does now.

That mode wouldn’t work very well on Twisted Treeline. The 3v3 map just snowballs out of hand far too quickly. Games would likely be decided by the first fight (and in some cases, they still are). For Summoner’s Rift, though, I think it would give casual players more opportunity to fire up a game while the baby’s napping, in between classes, or just before heading to bed. Speaking of which…