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Pro Tips: Control the Dragon

August 8, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

At the outset, this seems like a very simple and sort of “no shit” post, but based on my experience I think this post is necessary, particularly with as young as ranked play is. If there’s one thing I find myself furiously pinging in almost every game, it’s little skull over the dragon. As Phreak reminds us in almost every Champion Spotlight, the dragon is not only worth more than a tower in gold, it’s also a couple heroes worth of XP for your entire team. If you find yourself having problems in ranked, start playing toons that can keep control of dragon.

It should go without saying that this won’t guarantee wins, but it can definitely improve your chances and hopefully give your team the edge for early ganks that may have otherwise gone the opposite direction. Most jungling toons are also good at taking down dragon, though some may require a little itemization to deal with the dragon’s health pool. Examples of good junglers/dragon-killers would be toons like Udyr, Shaco, Xin Zhao, Warwick, Amumu, and Fiddlesticks. While Shaco and Xin Zhao are regularly banned (occasionally Amumu as well), I almost never see an Udyr or Fiddlesticks ban, and despite some nerfs, both remain strong characters. There are some less played options as well. Gragas makes a surprisingly good jungler, and Poppy is plenty capable of killing dragon with a little help.

When you’re running one of these characters, dragon should be your number one priority. I cannot stress that enough. Remember the gold and experience benefit to your team. Getting dragon early and often means your team has both a level and gold advantage which only grows as the game continues. Once you’ve taken a few dragon kills, dragon also creates a great choke point to encourage the team fight that will hopefully be working in your favor. If the other team isn’t trying to stop you, it just makes dragon that much easier.

Even when your team is in control of dragon, make sure you’re warding. It’s easy to be out of position when the dragon spawns, and though you should be focusing on dragon, it can be advantageous to knock down a tower if your opponent is out of position. Even if you have the opportunity to push while the other team takes dragon, abandon the tower. Always keep in mind how much the dragon provides. It’s not a little game inside in the push/gank game. The dragon is the game, it’s just something people tend to ignore.

I like to think about things this way – the towers, the heroes, the creeps, all of those things will be there regardless of whether or not you go for dragon. If the other team is serious about dragon, though, you will be woefully behind.

league of legends, Pro Tips

dragon dragon control jungle champion jungler jungling map advantage map control

Valve making a DotA clone?

August 7, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Some of you may recognize the name Jon St. John. Yeah, he has a badass name in real life, but he’s also done voice acting for one well-known and incredibly delayed badass: Duke Nukem. Well, Jon St. John has a new project, and one that could be of interest to LoL players. He’s doing voice acting for Valve’s version of DotA.

I don’t really have any details, and frankly, the DotA moniker comes from JSJ, not from Valve. What we do know is that Valve hired IceFrog (the mind behind DotA (along with Zileas)) to make something to please DotA fans. Jon St. John posted to his Twitter account this weekend that he has been doing voice work for DotA at Valve Software. I’m not sure why he would call out the name of the game without hearing it from Valve, and if they didn’t give him the go ahead, you can bet he wouldn’t be talking about it.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot for the LoL community, but it could be bad news for any HoN fans out there. I’ve played a bit of HoN and been completely unimpressed, so it’s not like the name DotA will kill a game like LoL. It could kill HoN, though, especially with the kind of money Valve has. What could be a problem for LoL is just that – the money.

Valve could very easily sweep in on LoL territory with more bank, more developers, but more importantly, more support. With better server uptime and the bankroll to back a quicker development cycle, Valve could make a dent in the LoL player base. That’s not to say Valve will do that, just that it could with the resources it has. Valve was notoriously slow with some of the TF2 developments, though, even if TF2 has a massive player base. Let’s also not forget that IceFrog did work on HoN, and we can all see how well that’s going.

In short, I think it’s totally possible that Valve is working up a DotA clone and it has the potential to make a bit of a stink for the big players in the MOBA world. There are so many variables, though, that Valve has a long way to go before

league of legends, News

dota hon icefrog league league of legends lol valve

Carry/Feeder adjustments coming to ranked play

August 6, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I don’t think I’ve read better news today (granted, most of my reading to this point has been focused on either games or gadgetry, so it kinda makes sense). I found a thread in which Zileas said he would be adding feeder/carry consideration to the ELO calculations at the end of games.

This. Is. Huge. This is at least a step toward addressing the individual performance in a team setting and the penalties/benefits some players reap as a result. As a for instance, I had a game today in which I played Shaco. I got a slow start, mostly because I was on the phone and not focused on my jungling, so I didn’t gank much early. I did try for one big gank on our 1v2 lane and sent them back to base, so it wasn’t a horrible early game. Well, not to me anyway.

My teammates, on the other hand, would not stop berating me for being a terrible Shaco and a waste of a team slot and on and on. Our Olaf kept insisting I was going to be useless late game because I hadn’t ganked. As it turned out, I went 11-2-15 with two tower kills before the other team surrendered. Regardless of what my team thought was going on, I was largely the reason behind the victory, or at least the very heavy piece of leaden straw that broke the camel’s back. Our Olaf slightly below 1.00 in his K/D ratio and our Mordekaiser was 1-9. For the other team, that can be an extremely frustrating loss. They likely could have beat our team with a different player. My understanding, then, is that their ELO will not be as negatively effected because we had a strong carry. Likewise, my own ELO should receive a slight bonus for carrying.

On the flipside, if Kaiser had somehow lost us the game (which he almost did), we likely wouldn’t be as penalized because we had a heavy feeder on our team. No word on when these changes will come out, but I’m really excited about them.

Development, league of legends

carry carry adjustment elo elo adjustments feeder feeder adjustment ranked games ranked matches ranked play ranked solo

Annie in Wonderland coming soon

August 6, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

Annie According to a recent ByronicHero post, it looks like Riot will be rounding out the Alice in Wonderland theme that got started with Mad Hatter Shaco by adding an Annie in Wonderland. Check the official post below:

Greetings, summoners!
A most peculiar thing happened to me today. While I was sitting in my garden indulging in a bottle of Shiraz and having a look at my copy of Don Juan, I spied a white rabbit in a waistcoat inspecting his pocket watch. Pondering this, I came to the immediate (and admittedly justified) conclusion that I must have overindulged. My suspicions were totally confirmed when the rabbit proceeded to exclaim at how late he was for a most pressing appointment.
As my befuddled rodent friend scampered off, I devised that the only reasonable thing to do was to stay put. After all, everyone knows that following a questionable white bunny only results in falling into a deep hole or an excursion to an inner city goth club filled with hackers in leather pants. Instead I decided that the operate response would be to rouse myself from my contemplative, wine-related haze by splashing some cold water on my face. Upon doing so, I felt revived and ready to face the day… that is until I spotted the enormous bear grinning back at me through the bathroom looking glass.
The moral of the story is that things are not always what they seem. Sometimes white rabbits are white rabbits, but oftentimes they are also giant, burning teddy bears dressed up as rabbits. There’s really no way of knowing until you happen upon one in the mirror while you’re trying to wake yourself up.

There are really no two ways to interpret that. Tibbers is gonna look like the giant demon bunny from Donnie Darko and the pervert contingent might finally get their teenage Annie. It’s going to be an epic day when that one launches. Expect this to be legendary in cost.

Reviews

alice in wonderland annie in wonderland mad hatter shaco new skins skins themed skins upcoming skins

Xbox LIVE Summer of Arcade Review: Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

August 6, 2010 / Jason Zingale

castlevania-title

With the “Castlevania” franchise at a crossroads of sorts, it might have seemed like a good idea to create a game that helped remind fans why they fell in love with the series in the first place, but “Harmony of Despair” doesn’t even do that right. Recycling old characters, enemies and bosses from past installments, it’s like a Greatest Hits collection without any hits. There are only six levels to play through, and no story bridging them together. Instead, you just select one of five playable vampire slayers (Soma Cruz, Alucard, Jonathan Morris, Shanoa and Charlotte Aulin) – each with their own unique weapons and abilities – and trudge through each level hacking away at baddies until you arrive at the final boss. This is easier said than done, however, as you’ll often spend 20 minutes travelling through the labyrinthine mansions, only to be killed cheaply in the boss fight and have to start from the very beginning all over again.

Additionally, the mansions have plenty of hidden areas and treasures to discover, but since each level is timed, there’s little room for exploration. (Though this wouldn’t be such a problem if your character didn’t move like he was walking through quicksand.) You’ll also have trouble navigating through the sprawling 2D maps using the 3x zoom feature, as you can only make out what you’re character is doing in one of them. Thank goodness for multiplayer, then, as it’s the only good original idea in the game. Though completing levels with a six-player party can be a little too easy at times, it still makes for a much more enjoyable experience. Fallen teammates can be revived using Water of Life items found in treasure chests, and while you wait to be brought back from the dead, you get to play as a skeleton. But good luck finding a party that actually stays together for more than one round, let alone long enough to make it past the lobby. Fans deserved a lot better than this, because the only Harmony of Despair you’re going to find here is the thousands of gamers uniting to complain about how bad this game is.

Want more Summer of Arcade? Be sure to come back every Wednesday through August 18th for a first-hand look at Microsoft’s newest XBLA exclusives. Next week: get ready for the most lethal sport of the future as a player on “Monday Night Combat.”