Tag: farming

      Have you noticed the minion bug?

      November 20, 2011 /

      For a few weeks now I’ve felt just a little bit sloppy in lane. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but like any good gamer I was ready to blame my farming problems on anyone or anything other than myself. Alright, that’s not entirely true. I eventually chalked up my diminished minion farming capacity to my own waning interest in League of Legends. As it turns out, my skills may be in tact.

      According to RiotVeonneth, there is currently a “significant bug with minion targeting.” He also commented on an upcoming fix saying, “This bug unfortunately took us a while to pin down, but we’ve now identified the core issue and are working on a fix as fast as we can.”

      Have you noticed the issue? The times that I noticed it were rare. Like I said, my farming just felt a little sloppy. Have you felt your game slipping recently?

      league of legends

      Pro Tips: Focus on your farm

      January 12, 2011 /

      Harrowing minions.

      Most of my recent writing has been editorial, looking at sweeping changes to the different games I play and what it means for the development of the title. I love writing that stuff, but I also miss writing stuff like this, so here we are. Today’s pro tip is something simple, but often overlooked, even at higher ELOs.

      The other day I was laning with my brother. We always have a good time playing together but something felt different. I was having trouble last-hitting creeps, something I never struggle with, to the point that my friends usually ask me to stop last-hitting so well. The problem wasn’t me. It was him. He was last-hitting like a fiend, building up his creep count and working toward a really nice early game farm.

      If you want to immediately improve your game, learn to last hit. Farming is the most important part of your early game, even more so than ganking. If you’ve ever left lane to attempt a gank and returned to find your opponents out-leveling you and crushing your creep count, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve ever seen a Miss Fortune with Infinity Edge at 14 minutes, you also know what I’m talking about. A successful early farm allows you to leap past your opponents’ gear levels and sets you up for a strong end game.

      A strong farm is more than just last hitting creeps, though. You should always be looking for ways to maximize your gold. Jump out of lane to briefly grab jungle creeps while the lane pushes back up. Learn when you need to help your team defend a turret and when you can avoid the stalemate and go farm a side lane. Learn when you need to abandon a tower because the defense is crippling your farm.

      Also, don’t be afraid to ask your teammates to let you farm. The other day I was playing Zilean, laning with a Mundo player. That’s a great lane team, right? Well, it was, but Mundo didn’t want to zone our opponent. Instead, he was chucking his cleavers at creeps, often killing them from 30 percent health or more. Not only was it pushing our lane, it was ruining my farm. I asked him to let me farm. He wasn’t interested, so I just started bombing every creep I saw. I know, that’s not a great example, but it illustrates the point that farming is a team effort. If you aren’t cooperating with your lanemate, you better hope you have better farming skills or get out of lane. If you’re lucky, though, you’ll get a teammate who knows how to zone with abilities and last hit with attacks and who will compliment your own skillset.

      The last thing I’ll say is don’t sweat it. Creeps take very predictable damage, so you’ll get better. If your opponents are beating you by 5-10 creeps, no big deal. When they go up 30-40, that’s when you need to worry. With a little focus, though, you should be able to push your creep count up, buy high-tier items early in the game, and help carry your team to victory.

      league of legends, Pro Tips

      LoL: Live Ezreal impressions

      March 17, 2010 /

      Ezreal in his Nottingham garb.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.

      Development, league of legends

      LoL: The state of Sivir

      March 9, 2010 /

      An original Sivir skin.I decided to try something new recently and give Sivir a go. I’ve always hated her, mostly because I’ve seen her pushing power completely dominate a game. She’s always seemed like an unstoppable force in the right hands, so I figured I should see if it’s really the toon.

      Let me just say that I think Sivir might be the best character for mid in the game. She bulldozes creeps for very little mana and has no trouble with champions that aren’t built for extremely high survivability. I’ve faced casters, tanks, and carries all mid and had very little trouble, even against the good players. Some of them slowed my farm, forcing me to take Spell Shield over Boomerang Blade, but no one has been able to completely shut me down.

      As of this post I’ve won 80% of my games as Sivir. My losses were actually in premades during which I suffered from unskilled teammates. In one game I was paired with a level 13 Annie. We lost. Badly. In the other games, though, I’ve been such a force mid that I have to wonder about her balance. I don’t think she’s particularly good for solo queue. Without solid team coordination she has too much pushing power that, when coupled with a move speed modifier and a spell shield, gives her the survivability to truly own a game.

      Really, I think this latest patch has caused most of the problems. She has always been strong, but with the heavy prioritization on farming, Sivir can easily level gap people in ways only the best gankers could previously do. The upcoming patch should help, reducing the range at which she can farm and increasing gank XP. I’ll update this post with a little more in-depth match detail when I’ve spent more time with her.

      Development, league of legends

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