Since Twisted Treeline launched in matchmaking I’ve been able to spend most of my time in game learning the new map. I feel pretty comfortable with the general mechanics but there’s something I have yet to master. As much as I try to fine tune my comps, I find myself overwhelmed or outmatched often on TT and its usually for very different reasons.

As a for instance, I had a game earlier in the weekend in which a Singed/Nidalee/Ezreal completely rocked my world. Both DPS were packing flash and would flee while Singed poisoned my team to death. Granted, our own Nidalee was hesitant to participate in fights to the point of basically losing us the game, but that actually made me realize what’s so tough about TT. The new map exacerbates any weakness in your team, whether it’s the player or the comp. Because the fights are smaller you can afford very few mistakes.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen on TT, and one I keep making myself, is a lack of preparation against your opponent. A lot of teams tend to be very tanky on TT, so it’s important to have a large healthpool yourself, even if it means gimping your DPS a bit. A full-on damage farm doesn’t mean anything if you get bursted down in a blink. By the same logic, you better be able to rip apart those escapable toons. If they’re constantly able to get away you’ll find yourself frustrated and level-gapped from the constant running.

If you’re having comp issues, make sure you’re packing enough DPS. Champs like Mundo and Poppy are popular because they mix high survivability with excellent damage output. Get your squishiest DPS to bring cleanse and hopefully you can make it out of TT with a few wins.

Ezreal has generated a lot of hate in the forums, mostly from those claiming that he’s too weak to be competitive. While I still think he has some farming trouble, I do think he’s incredibly strong against most heroes, particularly mages, and can carry a team to victory in the hands of a smart player. To help ease the learning curve, Phreak put together a tutorial video for Ezreal.

There are a couple things every beginning Ezreal player should notice. First, Phreak is never in the thick of the fight. He’s always floating behind his team, dropping mystic shot every couple seconds for big damage and healing as much as he can, focusing on physical damage toons for the attack speed buff. Ezreal is crazy squishy, so getting in the fight is something you really want to avoid.

Secondly, he takes one rank of each skill early to get his attack speed buff as high as possible, even in early fights. While you do miss some burst damage this way, it creates a bit of a surprise for the enemy when your attack speed is suddenly 60% higher. I recently laned against a Twitch in which this saved my life endless times. He would open up thinking he had an easy kill. Mystic shot, Essence Flux, and Arcane Shift and suddenly he was well below half health in terrible position. Ignite and another Mystic and that’s pretty much all she wrote.

Lastly, and this is something I didn’t realize until I had played him for some time, your Mystical Shot passive lowers the cooldown on your ultimate. That means you should be using your ultimate at every chance you get and then heading to farm to bring that CD down quickly. This thing alone will change the way you play. It rightly encourages you to use your ultimate instead of holding it and reinforces the fact that you should be farming with Mystical to help your ult refresh.

If you can take most of what Phreak says to heart you’ll find Ezreal to be a very strong toon with the potential to carry your team. Unfortunately, his skill ceiling is high enough that it takes a very skilled player to make the most of him, so most queue Ezreal players will be underwhelming.

I’ve only had the chance to spend a few games on Ezreal but he’s driven a lot of discussion on the forums so I thought it would be appropriate to post some impressions. Ezreal is definitely strong, but he’s likely going to be queue dodge material for a lot of people due to a very high skill ceiling. That’s mostly because he has four skill shots, but he’s’ also a terrible farmer in the wrong hands.

Let’s talk farming first, actually. Ezreal has big problems farming early game because he has no AOE farm skill like many other carries. You rely primarily on Mystic Shot, which can be difficult to land on the right creep, especially in a crowded side lane. I’ve personally been maxing Arcane Shift and Mystic Shot first, though I’ll probably try an Essence Flux build today. In either case, you need Mystic to keep your farm up and some sort of mana regen to allow some spell spam. If you can master farming on Ezreal you’ll be able to play him quite well.

While Ezreal can be built like a physical carry, he should be played in a support role, much like Nidalee, though with less early killing power. You should never be initiating fights unless you feel supremely confident in the win. He’s best used at the back of a fight, buffing and debuffing his team and enemies and pushing damage through with little risk of getting hit. He is extremely squishy, and while Arcane Shift might get you out of a fight for a quick second, it has a short enough range that it probably won’t save you against any ranged toon unless you see the gank coming and use it preemptively.

One of the big benefits of Ezreal is that he falls into the mixed heal/DPS category shared only by Nidalee. Mix in a Soraka, Alistar, or Taric and you have a team that will be very difficult to bring down, especially considering the state of anti-healing in the game. Depending on your lane comp, Essence Flux might be the way to go.

Overall, I can appreciate Riot’s stance on nerfs and buffs for this toon. We likely won’t see him at his full potential for a few weeks, though I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the player base calling for nerfs when that happens.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of an ability power beatdown, the kind where you can’t seem to leave your tower without getting insta-gibbed. There are few things that make me want to play mage more, but it’s not always a walk in the park. Mages walk a very fine line between blowing up the opponent and dying themselves because of low defense and a tiny health pool. Played well, though, mages can be very rewarding.

Playing a mage well requires you to plan further ahead than any other toon in the game. You should have a constant awareness of how much damage your skills will do by the number, not just how much you think you can pull off you enemy’s health bar. A Malphite at half health is very different from a Tristana at half health. For Malph, you have to break his shield before he actually takes damage. Trist, on the other hand, can jump away in most cases. Whichever you choose, you better be confident your spells can either take them down or hurt them badly enough that they’ll run. Part of being a mage is putting yourself into compromising positions for kills. If the kill doesn’t go off, be assured that you’re the next target.

If you’ve come up through the ranks playing mostly physical DPS toons or tanks, I would highly recommend making a smurf account to learn your mages. The playstyle is radically different from the other champions in the game, and learning at a high ELO can be difficult. Once you have a general feel for being the squishiest thing on the map, pick up a few games with friends before heading into the solo queue. The extra experience will give you the edge necessary to enjoy early success

Today’s LoL Basics post is a quick look at an essential stat for casters: cooldown reduction. It’s one of the best ways to increase your DPS at every stage of the game and can be very easy to max out.

Cooldown reduction, as the name suggests, reduces the amount of time between spell casts. Take Karthus, for instance. His ultimate starts at a 180 second cooldown. That’s a long time to wait, especially if your team is playing aggressively. If you’re going with a Mejai’s Soulstealer, you want to at least be picking up assists as often as you can, and an ult is great way to do that in other lanes.

A lot of items offer cooldown reduction, not to mention the runes you can buy. Frozen Heart is 25% reduction. Soul Shroud is 15%. Let’s say you have both those items on Karthus. Cooldown reduction works additively, so you’re at 40% reduction. For the 180 second ult, that means you can now cast every 108 seconds, which is really nice.

There is a caveat, though: cooldown reduction caps at 40%, meaning you can’t have any more than that. If you’ve specced into utility and offense for your masteries, you likely have 9% reduction. My own rune page puts me at 10% more, which means 4% of the CD reduction on Frozen Heart is lost. Granted, it has plenty of other benefits, but you should try to be conscious of how much of an item becomes worthless for you.

Don’t forget, you can also get the golem buff for an extra 25% CD reduction and some mana regen. Before taking the buff, though, consider whether you’re the best person to wear the buff on your team. If another player will be capable of more DPS, pass it off.