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      Champ of the Week: Early Malzahar impressions

      May 31, 2011 /

      malzahar_splash_0

      I got to play a few games over the holiday weekend with this week’s Champ of the Week, Malzahar, and I’ve been having a really good time. Malzahar is an incredible farmer, and when left alone for too long, he becomes an incredible pusher as well.

      My basic strategy to this point has been simple: build enough survivability to get by and then stack up mass amounts of AP. In about half of the games I’ve picked up a Rod of Ages early (12 minutes in one case) and moved to Deathcap from there, but in others I’ve been less worried about the health stack and just picked up Catalyst before moving on. I’ve had roughly equal success both ways – the basic lesson seems to be ‘don’t overdue the survivability.’

      I had sort of forgotten the massive buffs Malzahar received since his release. The last time I gave him any serious attention his ult could be Cleansed, it had a much shorter range, and it didn’t have the suppression bonus. Those changes have given Malzahar the ability to fight at great distance with devastating power.

      If I’m having trouble with one thing, it’s remembering to keep my Malefic Visions up in team fights. The cooldown gets very short with a golem buff or enough CDR, making it totally feasible to have a couple spells ticking at the same time. I’m slowly improving on that, though.

      I’m really curious where Deathfire Grasp could fit in a Malzahar build. I don’t know that it’s any more efficient than a raw AP stack, but the active and the extra cooldown reduction could be interesting with enough AP. I think I underuse Deathfire, even though it is one of my favorite items in the game. If I can get ahead of the enemy farm and pick one up, it’s an almost Veigar-style insurance that one of my enemies won’t get to participate.

      Check back later in the week for more Malzahar impressions.

      Champ of the Week, Champions, Editorial, league of legends

      The E-Sports sportmanship problem

      May 30, 2011 /

      Over the weekend Riot set quite a few E-sports records with its Season One Dreamhack qualifiers, the most notable of which is likely the 60,000+ viewers that tuned in for the qualifying matches. It was a clear marker of the popularity of E-sports in North America, not to mention League of Legends as a game.

      There was an ugly side to the proceedings as well. The whole tournament started under the drama umbrella that is Couter Logic Gaming and Team SoloMid. If ever you needed evidence of the age demographic of competitive gamers, just read a few threads between these two teams and their supporters. It won’t be interesting, I promise. It will be full of petty insults and the kind of high-school-grade trash you’re probably reading so often in the Tribunal.

      I think I was fortunate to hit my competitive gaming peak before any of these big tournaments got popular. The Halo 1 competitive scene was remarkably friendly, and I spent loads of time on message boards working out reload mechanics and powerup spawn times with the same guys I was playing against. We were all in love with the game and, frankly, stakes were pretty low. I was never up for $100,000. I think the biggest prize package I was ever competing for was a flat CRT TV (yeah, that’s right – like a bulky TV with a flat screen), a new Xbox, and a copy of Halo. Sure, it was nice, but it wasn’t going to make my life dramatically different (and I was playing against the Ogres, so…).

      As the competitive scene gains ground, the prizes have ratcheted up, which seems to somehow inversely proportional to player attitudes. Jon Tran at Top Tier Tactics put together an awesome piece about the effect player attitudes is having not only on competitive gaming but on the form’s mainstream acceptance. It is absolutely worth the read, but the basic gist is this: competitive gaming has a mainstream ceiling until players can learn to respect one another.

      If you want proof, consider Grackis. He is one of the most infamous LoL players, mostly for his insane fits of rage, but also for his skill. He was recently asked to commentate a competitive match at NESL and the LoL community went batty with indignation. If the very community playing the game doesn’t want this guy casting because of his bad behavior, do you think the gaming community at large wants to hear him rage?

      Of course not. In fact, I’m willing to bet the only reason people pay attention to any of the high tier players is because of the desire to be those players. They are the masters of the craft, so people are willing to take a little abuse if it means learning at the feet of people like HotshotGG. Unfortunately, exposure to the kind of “lol ur bad, kid” has infected most competitive gaming communities to the point that they’re nearly unbearable to be a part of. Review a few Tribunal cases and you’ll know what I mean.

      I’m hoping things improve, but as long as we continue to offer up celebrity status to players with an attitude, I think it will be quite some time before there’s a shift in tone.

      Editorial, Games in Media, league of legends

      Champ of the Week: Malzahar

      May 30, 2011 /

      malzahar_splash_2

      The more I play League of Legends lately the more I’ve fallen in love with AP characters. There’s something so satisfying about using a skillset to melt opponents that doesn’t quite translate in the auto attack kills of physical carries. Every team in the Dreamhack qualifiers relied on an AP champion for the utility, control and incredible burst potential those champions offer. This week, I’ll be playing a champion that has long frustrated me as an opponent, one that I have rarely played at length, and a champion that many believe to be underrepresented This week, I’ll be playing Malzahar for my Champ of the Week.

      I’ve always been frustrated to play against Malzahar, largely because it’s so hard to shut down his farm. He’s not particularly deadly at early levels, he’s just super deadly to minions and has nearly infinite mana thanks to the kill bonus on Malefic Visions. Malzahar can also melt champions like no other, thanks to the percentage based damage of Null Zone. When coupled with AoE CC like Amumu or even Jarvan, Null Zone absolutely shreds the enemy. To round out the kit, Malz has an AoE silence and a pet for extra damage. Malzahar punishes enemy mistakes with devastating efficiency and provides both push and anti-push to his own team. In short, he’s a great pick.

      I’ll be focusing on build order, Summoner Spell selection, and relative power on low-CC teams. Obviously Malzahar shines when his targets are held in place, but how well can he perform in less than ideal circumstances? My guess is extremely well. I think it’s safe to say that the only caster I fear more than Malzahar is Anivia.

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

      Champ of the Week: Teemo Wrapup

      May 29, 2011 /

      teemo_splash_1

      The Teemo champ of the week has been one of the toughest yet. Teemo is missing a lot of the mobility and survivability that other champions have, not to mention that he has one of the weakest passives in the game. He can still have an excellent early game, though, as long as you’re willing to play carefully.

      I started the week trying to tweak my typical Teemo build to take advantage of Trinity Force and Wit’s End. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of gold to put toward items that best augment a naturally high attack damage or a naturally higher attack speed. Teemo’s poison certainly gives him a lot of damage, but it adds magic damage to each shot, both when the attack lands and in the damage over time. For that reason, Malady/Bloodrazor seem to be the best way to go, with a little survivability as you need it. I’m not typically a fan of Frozen Mallet, but it really is a solid item for Teemo if you don’t need a Banshee’s Veil.

      The strangest thing about Teemo is his secret taunt passive. For whatever reason, players love to kill Teemo. Even in fights in which I thought I was second or even third priority, I often found myself getting focused immediately. In a weird way, this can absolutely help your team. Teemo’s damage output is great once he’s farmed, but depending on map position, taking the priority off your carries can be effective.

      For the most part, I think Teemo is in a pretty good place. He needs a team with enough crowd control/peel to help keep him alive, a favor he can return with the exceptional map control offered by his mushrooms. If I could change one thing about Teemo it would definitely be his passive. His passive has essentially one use and one use only: level 1 harassment. It can be helpful when setting up a teamfight, but unless you’re well ahead of your opponent, it usually doesn’t make sense to stand still long enough to take advantage of the passive. I’d like to see him get some sort of damage or utility, potentially giving him the survivability to make it into the jungle. My few attempts to counter jungle were met with almost immediate failure. Counter junglers really need to be able to control creeps, not champions, and Teemo just doesn’t have that power early in the game.

      Stay tuned later today for this coming week’s Champ of the Week.

      Reviews

      Tribunal still has a few hangups

      May 27, 2011 /

      I wrote just a couple days ago that the Tribunal seems like an early success. I still think it does, but there are a few issues that I think are worth mentioning. For starters, I got the same case twice in a row today. It’s not a huge deal once in a while, but it would suck for that to happen on multiple occasions.

      There is a much more serious issue, though, and it’s one I’m not entirely sure how to handle. Today I played a game in which the Poppy on my team had a rough start. She died four times early in her lane, mostly because she was playing foolishly, soaking entire creep waves to try to get a little harass on the enemy Ashe. It was bad news. She then left lane and started taking my jungle, openly stating that she wasn’t going back to the lane. That’s a bit of an issue when the lane was 2v2 at the start, is now fed, and leaves our teammate 2v1. I tried to help out where it was possible, but I was also actively counter-jungling and couldn’t just stop and lane.

      Things escalated. Poppy started stealing buffs, purposefully stopped helping our team in teamfights, said she was going into “bot mode” and eventually started feeding on purpose. Around the time she stopped helping our team I said something like “meanwhile Poppy farms top” after a teamfight. I also asked the enemy team to please report her for her negligence. The response? “How bout I report you for raging at her.” Now granted, I would probably get pardoned – I never used so much as a curse word – but from that point forward, Poppy was trying to make it look as though I was the troll in chat. To the trained eye it would have been obvious what was going on, but my enemies were quick to assume I was at fault, and so quick to report.

      That’s where the real problem lies. When my teammate is purposely feeding and purposefully trying to steal buffs, I don’t want to be in that game. Frankly, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to AFK. But when the enemy has suddenly chosen you as the bad guy, then my AFK becomes bannable, and that’s not so cool.

      Hopefully, though, the system does indeed work as Riot suggests, so that the false positives that occasionally get reported don’t make it all the way to Tribunal. I would be willing to guess that I could possibly have been reported in three of my last 50 or so games, and at least two of those would be instant pardons.

      Current Affairs, league of legends

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