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      Patch day passes without champion release

      May 24, 2011 /

      Frostfire Annie.

      I’m happy to report that I wasn’t eaten by bears over the weekend. I did come back to a decent amount of work, though, and there is the usual catching up to do across various gaming forums and RSS feeds. I finally had a chance to check out today’s patch this afternoon and was a little surprised when there was no new champion.

      I know the teaser post was made late in the week, and I’m guessing with the office move Riot didn’t have time to fully balance out a champion. With that in mind, I’m really glad we didn’t see a new champion today. In fact, it has made me wish champion releases were just a little further apart. I’ve mentioned that before, but it’s been a while since Riot has actually missed a release date, giving me some time to reflect on the difference.

      It’s a nice breather to be able to focus on the other champion changes in today’s patch, even if those changes were pretty light. Annie got some minor buffs, as did Kog’Maw, and Vayne saw a few minor nerfs, but Alistar saw some pretty serious damage nerfs that could dramatically affect the way players build him. Irelia also got some significant changes – mostly to her ult – which I’m interested to test out a bit.

      I am a little curious when we’ll see Orianna. I would love to see her put off another two weeks; I can’t imagine it makes financial sense to release her even mid-cycle and then give us another champ a week later. If anything, I suppose I could see pushing her back a week and then pushing the development cycle out a week from here forward.

      What do you think? Is this a nice respite from the stream of champion releases or do you prefer to have someone new in champion select every two weeks?

      Champions, Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Champ of the Week: Nunu wrapup

      May 20, 2011 /

      yeti_splash_1

      I know it’s only Friday, but I took some friends up on a last minute camping trip so I’ll be gone until Monday. I didn’t want to leave you high and dry on the Champ of the Week, though, and I certainly played enough games with Nunu this week to throw together a conclusive wrapup.

      My conclusions are essentially the same as they were a few days ago. Nunu is an absolute blast if you can stomach not being the guy with your name in lights. Not all the time, anyway. While most characters with Nunu’s brand of team buffing and enemy debuffing don’t have what it takes to blow up a target, Nunu’s ult offers him the chance to be the star here and there and that makes him feel even better.

      There is one important facet of Nunu’s gameplay that I haven’t talked about and that I rarely cover on the blog: peeling. Peeling is getting in the way of enemies who are trying to get to your team’s carry, just as you are trying to get at the enemy carry. Teams need to be able to do this or else the carry gets burned down and suddenly you’ve come up short on damage. Since Ice Blast has a 60 percent slow at max rank, Nunu is great at peeling. He also has the added benefit of a movement speed buff to throw on the carry, hopefully offering enough of a gap for escape. Nunu can also plant himself between the enemy team and the carry, waiting to use his ult until the enemy overcommits.

      In short, Nunu has all of the tools you could want from an allied jungler, so long as your team has enough damage in the lanes. Between your team buffs, your debuffs for your opponents, some very solid damage output and the extra dragon/Baron control offered by consume, Nunu can be the cornerstone of any competitive team.

      Champ of the Week, Champions, league of legends

      Minecraft 1.6 to release next week

      May 19, 2011 /

      Minecraft Nether

      At first, Minecraft 1.6 wasn’t looking like it would be much fun. Notch mentioned the majority of the release had to do with bug fixes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be glad for a more bug free experience, but bug fixes are about as low on the glamour totem pole as you can get. As the days passed after 1.5, though, Notch seemed to get more ambitious, adding an updating map feature to the 1.6 to-do list along with an update everyone can get excited about – Nether functionality in SMP.

      To this point, Nether functionality has only been possible through server mods. It works well enough, but its a strain on server resources and adds one more thing that has to be updated by a third party coder before multiplayer servers using the feature can expect to upgrade.

      If you haven’t played in the nether yet, get there in your single player world. It’s unbelievably spooky for a world that is made solely of blocks.

      Minecraft, News

      Riot pre-releases the Tribunal amidst forum unrest

      May 18, 2011 /

      If you spent some time on the forums today you might have noticed a higher than average amount of unrest about Riot’s development cycle. Among the many lessons the internet has taught is the fact that the internet and its denizens do not forget a date, a time frame, or anything that sounds vaguely like a promise. It’s the reason developers are unwilling to lay down release dates that aren’t absolutely set in stone.

      One of the more prominent threads today asked for a timeline on achievements, a feature that has had a tab in the PvP.net client for quite a while but hasn’t received a whole lot of airtime. Phreak stepped in today to quell any hopes that we might see achievements soon, pointing out that balance changes and features like the Tribunal are higher on the totem pole. The thread quickly filled with complaints that even those features high up on Riot’s to-do list haven’t been done, that is until Riot did something I never saw coming: Riot released the Tribunal.

      Technically, the company is calling it a pre-release as it will only be accessible to summoners that have achieved level 30. I use the future tense because shortly after the official pre-release it seems interest in the feature rocked the Riot servers and brought the website crashing down. So now we sit, patiently waiting out a 4-hour maintenance window to see what this new feature, which was first announced in January, is all about.

      It seems like a strange confluence of events that Tribunal would release on one of the most active forum complaining days I’ve seen in months. I’m not saying Riot made the release based on the griping, but rather that Riot’s timing is either perfect or perfectly awful.

      If Tribunal works, if summoners really get behind the idea of doling out justice to the grouchy bastards that ruin so many games, the system could be a real boon for the community. I think it could definitely lift spirits enough to carry people into Season Two at the least, about which we’ll hopefully get some news over the next couple weeks. There’s also a solid chance that it will generally improve behavior in game, which I think everyone would welcome.

      Tribunal could be a flop, though. I know a lot of people who have been waiting a long time for the League’s gameplay to evolve, something that hasn’t happened in quite some time, at least not for veterans of the game and genre. While Battle Training and Co-op vs. AI are certainly gameplay features, the first has no value to seasoned summoners and I would consider the second situational at best. If Tribunal doesn’t capture our collective attention, I can already hear the gnashing of teeth about the informal priority list Phreak served up today. As I mentioned earlier, the internet doesn’t forget, and they certainly won’t forget this one, even if Phreak was just giving an example.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Champ of the Week: Undefeated with Nunu so far

      May 17, 2011 /

      yeti_splash_3

      After watching players from several top teams perform very well with Nunu, I knew he had the ability to make some game-changing plays. I wondered, though, if that power would translate to lower ELOs, where players tend to make their own mistakes instead of being forced into mistakes or out of their comfortable playstyle by another skilled opponent. From what I’ve seen so far, Nunu is just as powerful at my ELO as he is up top. I’m 3-0 since I started playing him this week, and two of those games have been absolute blowouts.

      I used to see fairly limited success with Nunu, but I think that’s mostly due to the fact that I wasn’t speccing him or using runes for tanking. I know, I know, it seems like that should be obvious, but hitting someone for a huge chunk of his health with that snowball is just so much fun. The tank build keeps Nunu from being a priority target because he can absorb so much damage. That means you can spend more time alive in the fight, slowing critical targets, buffing your carries, and saving that ultimate for just the right moment.

      Speaking of that ultimate, my god can it be fun. I used to think it was only possible to get a full channel if you had baited the enemy team into unexposed brush, but I had a game today in which I hit a full ult on a Shen, Pantheon, and Nocturne. That probably won’t happen often, but few things have felt better in this game than watching my channel bar fill up, the instant pop for a double kill at the end, followed by an Ice Blast for a triple kill. This was all immediately followed by a 4-0 surrender vote, which is just about as clear as it gets when I’m looking for an affirmation of my contribution.

      Despite that situation, kills aren’t really Nunu’s strong point. While he can definitely run down a half-health jungler in the woods, his skills are really best suited to forcing the enemy team to fight. Unless everyone has a Flash ready, the combination of Ice Blast, his speed buff on an ally with some sort of crowd control, and his ultimate make for tough getaways. With all that control, he also has the benefit of a very hefty ultimate, a spell that can do loads of damage if left unchecked.

      I think that’s what makes Nunu so much fun, and why I have such an easy time succeeding with him. Whatever it says about my personality, I love being the team’s hero. I like getting the kills, getting fed to the point that I can hard carry, melting the towers, and just generally seeing my name in lights. There’s just one problem with that mentality – the best spot for a skilled player on any team is usually in the tank/support department. Every team needs someone who can help set up the kills, cover a lane in a pinch, and worry about the big picture during teamfights while everyone else focuses on target priority. For me, Nunu brings all of those skills, with the added bonus that his ult hits like a bomb at every stage of the game. With just a little CC on your own team, Absolute Zero is remarkably easy to land, occasionally resulting in that double or triple kill that always keeps me coming back for more.

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

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