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      Current Affairs: Normal Draft to remain active

      September 20, 2011 /

      Today’s maintenance was supposed to remove Normal Draft mode from the list of available queue types, along with re-enabling ranked game modes. I was pleasantly surprised when I logged in and found that Normal Draft was still enabled.

      Later in the day, Tamat followed the surprise inclusion with this post:

      We’ve heard your feedback, and as a part of our ongoing commitment to making League of Legends an even more fun and awesome experience for players of all preferences, we are officially introducing Draft Mode into Normal Games! Now you can play like the pros without any impact on your ranked rating!

      I have to say, this is probably the best feature launch we’ve yet seen in League of Legends. Why? Because we didn’t expect it. It wasn’t overhyped (unless you count the rumors/occasional red posts saying it may have sort of might be almost is kinda getting worked on). Hell, we were even told we wouldn’t be keeping the feature.

      And yet, here it is, and it’s pretty awesome. Good on you, Riot. Good on you.

      Current Affairs, league of legends

      Champ of the Week: Trundle

      September 20, 2011 /

      Junkyard Trundle

      After so many games as a solo in the mid lane, I think it’s time I get back to the place I’ve come to call home in so many of my games – the jungle. What better champion to play in the midst of normal draft mode than the champion that embodies so many LoL players these days: Trundle. This week I’ll be taking everyone’s favorite troll onto Summoner’s Rift to see where he stands.

      Trundle is sort of a unique jungler in that his power level hasn’t changed much since release. In fact, I can only remember bug fixes for him – not even the slightest number tweak. Trundle is also widely underplayed, at least in my experience. Most serious players regard him as a threat, and I’ve seen him picked in several high profile tournaments. Still, he seems to be missing the special something that makes players really fall in love with a champion.

      I’ll be focusing mostly on ways Riot could give Trundle a bit of magic – not damage, just some spark. His builds are pretty standard for a jungler, but I’m willing to get creative if you have any suggestions. I was going to test to see if builds like Warmog’s/Atma’s work on him but I already know the answer. Of course they do – Warmog’s/Atma’s works on just about anyone.

      Check back later in the week for more impressions, and keep an eye out for the Veigar wrapup tomorrow.

      Champ of the Week, league of legends

      FG LoL Mondays are on – 9:30PM EST

      September 19, 2011 /

      FG LoL Mondays

      We’re ready for another FG LoL Monday night. Tonight I’ll be playing games with any and all who are interested. Join the chat channel “Fearless Gamer” in the PvP.net client around 9:15 so we can see how many people are interested. Depending on numbers and what people want to do we can either play some in-house games or run some queues. It looks like Normal Draft mode is still active, which I think is a great option for groups.

      Hope to see you online tonight!

      FG LoL Mondays, league of legends

      Riven impressions: the power vs. kit conundrum

      September 19, 2011 /

      I’ve finally been able to get in enough games with Riven to write a proper impressions post. It seems the prevalent opinion is that she’s underpowered and needs a buff, but I think her problems are a little more complicated. I think Riven has a beastly kit, a kit strong enough that the smallest buffs could make her insanely overpowered. To me, Riven is a classic example of too many skills on one champion, even if she doesn’t hit that hard (I think she hits plenty hard, though).

      Let’s break down her full set of skills at level 18. She has a three-part dash on a 12 second cooldown, an AoE stun on a 7 second cooldown, a dash/shield on a 7 second cooldown, and a damage steroid/ranged execute on a 45 second cooldown. That’s a pretty nasty kit if she can get farmed, which I’ve been able to do in several games.

      One of the great things about Riven is her ability to weave stuns with her team. by getting to a fight early, she can dash -> stun to initiate, let her teammates use CC, and stun very quickly again. Unfortunately, she has to be very close to her target for that stun to land, and this is a recurring issue for her. Her ult’s active has the same problem, as does the third tick on her Broken Wings.

      Riven also suffers from animation issues. After activating her stun, her next auto attack seems dramatically delayed. Her ultimate’s active has a massive delay on its cast, and the animations for Broken Wings are long enough that it’s easy to flip away from your target, especially if they’re moving. Add this all to the fact that Trinity Force doesn’t do her much good and Riven starts to look pretty weak.

      As I mentioned above, though, I think she has an awesome kit. Frankly, if Jarvan and Irelia and Udyr and their Trinity Force friends didn’t have such ridiculous damage output, Riven would probably look pretty great. As it is, she’s totally reliant on attack damage for scaling, but because of her kit, her scaling can’t be very good.

      Champions, league of legends

      Dominion to see limited beta release for all players

      September 18, 2011 /

      Dominion Crystal Scar.

      Tamat announced at the end of last week that Dominion will be playable in the near future as part of a limited beta. Basically the game mode will be enabled during off-peak hours for anyone to play, but only for a limited amount of time.

      I like the idea; it will be nice to get our hands on the game type early and hopefully the data will help produce a smooth release. As always, though, the issue is timing. You may remember this sort of thing happened with Twisted Treeline. It was available in limited doses early on, but there was a pretty significant gap between the first look at Twisted Treeline and its actual release.

      That’s my big worry with Dominion. I already posted that it might get pushed back until October, but let’s consider a timeline in which testing gets started this week. I would imagine we’ll have at least two weeks of testing, followed by at least one week of development based on gathered data, followed by another week of internal testing before deploy. That’s four weeks, which puts us into the middle of October. Honestly, I think that’s best case scenario. It seems totally plausible to me that Dominion won’t fully launch until November.

      I really hope that’s not the case. Dominion looks like a blast, but I’m not sure it will be able to keep all of my attention once we’re in the thick of the fall release schedule.

      Dominion, league of legends

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