Tag: poking

      Pro Tips: Playing against Soraka

      July 18, 2010 /

      soraka-splashI’m starting this column as a way to help newer players, and those who want to boost their ELO, learn to play against some of the more popular team comps and champions.

      Today’s Pro Tip covers some strategy for playing against and beating Soraka. As it stands, Soraka is the best healer in game and often one of the first bans. She’s also the character many players turn to as the key to victory when she’s in a game. Soraka is beatable, though, and while she does bring nice heals to her team, she also doesn’t bring very much damage, which can give your team the upper hand in a team fight.

      The most important part of beating Soraka is picking against her. You need to have characters with a good mix of CC and preferably an anti-healer like Katarina and Tristana or a silencer, like Cho’Gath, Malzahar, and Garen. Soraka is also a weak AOE healer – once she blows Wish, all of her teammates but one are left to their own devices. Combinations of Malphite, Amumu, Fiddlesticks, Annie, and Anivia bring a lot of pain to a team. You should also consider taking characters with dashes and jumps that can help you get past the front lines and on to the DPS or Soraka herself. If you don’t have a dash, consider taking Flash against Soraka so you can surprise her with a stun or heavy nukes. Durability is also an option since a Soraka team is short a damage dealer. They will have trouble bringing down more durable teams, but make sure you still have enough DPS to get through her heals.

      While most people think Soraka is hard to lane against, she can’t do much more than heal. Soraka relies on her lanemate and creep waves to provide the damage to keep you at bay while she farms. If you can separate her from the creep wave by zoning, you have a very favorable situation. Pick toons with strong lane harass/durability and preferably some range to force her to constantly heal herself. Kat and Tristana are obviously strong against Soraka in lane, but toons like Corki, Ashe, Garen, and Mundo can also do well. Spend your lane time ducking in and out of brush to harass and last hit minions. DO NOT PUSH. Pushing Soraka to her tower means she gets to free farm and level those heals you hate so much. Focus on sending her to base at least once before she hits level five.

      In teamfights you either have to burn her down or drop big AOE damage on the opposing team. If you can’t do either of those, wait for an opportunity in which you can. Soraka doesn’t bring much DPS to the table, so you should be able to head off into the woods and round up the buffs, hopefully baiting your enemies into the tighter confines of the forest. Jungle fights are best against Soraka because it forces her to be close to you. In case you need to focus her, make sure your dashing/blinking champions are with you. They can get to her and get the CC started while your team gets set to take down the rest of the enemy team.

      Above all, stay focused. Soraka capitalizes on teams that overextend by dropping heals at the last instant to alter the course of a battle. Focus your targets, use anti-healing wisely, and you should be able to bring her down without much trouble.

      league of legends, Pro Tips

      How bad is the kiting metagame?

      July 11, 2010 /

      Janna.There has been a lot of talk, and frankly a lot of action on Riot’s part, aimed at fixing the kiting/healing metagame that has become so popular. There are a lot of people, though, who would tell you it isn’t really a problem, just that the game has taken a shift and people haven’t quite figured out how to fight it. In a way, I think those people are right, at least when it comes to arranged team fights, but the kiting metagame is brutal in solo queue, which is why I think we see it so often.

      Phreak recently responded to a post about kiting with the following advice:

      The average matchmaking game doesn’t have everyone picking A-tier champions, as Janna and co. are. The average matchmaking game doesn’t have “perfect” team comps (tank, ranged dps, mage, support, support). This team relies heavily on Ashe’s ability to carry the game. Certainly Heimer can deal lots of damage, but it’s very inconsistent: Grenade can miss, Rockets may not hit champions, and the same with Turrets. Meanwhile his ultimate actually deals no damage.

      Certainly you can make the case that the team comp revolves around Ashe very well: Heimer’s turrets, Janna, Alistar all can babysit her. However, I want to bring up a counter-example:

      Amumu, Morgana, Fiddlesticks, Pirate, [insert champion]. Primarily this comp focuses on the first 3. Fiddlesticks + Black Shield is going to be able to easily Crowstorm onto the enemy team, Fear/Silence the Janna, and mop up all the squishies (Heimer, Ashe, Janna). While this is happening, Amumu and Morgana Ults keep everyone in place. The 2.5 seconds on Amumu lets Morgana finish her channel, and everyone’s just been stunned during the entirety of Crowstorm. Certainly all of Heimer’s turrets and Janna are dead at this point. The disables don’t do enough damage to punch through Black Shield, so Janna can’t bounce Fiddlesticks away with her ult. Great success! Pirate adds to the mix of course, etc.

      Thing is, the 5man ultimate Press-R-And-Win was flavor all through late 2009. I’m surprised it hasn’t come back, because it seems to me that if you can kill everyone in 5 seconds, you win.

      First, he makes some really valid points. When things go as he described, you’ll beat any kite team in basically any game. The problem, of course, is that things never go like that for anyone not in a 5-man premade, and even if you play it perfectly, there’s still the fact that the kite team could also be full of good players, in which case the likelihood of a perfectly timed Fiddle ult drops significantly (wards, CV, general map awareness).

      The other point about kite teams is simply that they don’t have to be grouped up to be totally effective. In fact, they’re usually better off when they’re spread out, forcing you to take at least one extra teammate to ensure the kill (remember, kiters are great at escaping). The kiting comps are also made up of the best pushers in the game so when you leave lane to help other folks deal with the early game pain that a lot of kiters have (zoning, general lane control), you’re leaving your lane open to the push.

      In the end, it takes crazy coordination to beat most kite comps, and that’s just not something you get in the average game. Hopefully draft mode will help some of this, but for the time being, kite comps are a safe and fairly easy way to guarantee yourself some wins.

      league of legends

      Rise of the initiators [metagame]

      June 26, 2010 /

      Ashe.

      The Kog’Maw patch brought with it two skills that make ganking much more difficult than it has been in the past – Hawkshot and Living Artillery. Both skills grant vision of nearby areas, including brush, making the bait-to-buff ganks much more difficult to pull off. As long as Kog’Maw is new, and Ashe is in basically every game, these skill will be so prevalent that they will tip the game to favor the teams with the best initiators.

      Prior to the Hawkshot/Living Artillery, the only other skills that provided this utility were Twisted Fate’s ultimate and the summoner skill Clairvoyance. Now, though, you can bet those skills will be in every game. When Season One finally drops, I’ll be begging my teams to ban Ashe in every game, mostly for Hawkshot. To me it seems a little crazy that you would give one of the strongest carries in the game such a great skill. Kog’Maw’s is weaker, but still great for scouting before you rush into a dangerous situation.

      I’ve already noticed the average length of my games going up because of these skills. Teams that are short on initiation are forced to the woods to try for ganks. The reveals start and both teams dance away from each other, waiting for the other to make a mistake. The standoff is insanely boring and prolongs what could otherwise be an exciting situation/game.

      I do appreciate the attempt to move the game away from poking, but the move has taken the game beyond poking range to a standoff in which everyone waits for the reveals to wear off and the best initiator tends to win the fight.

      league of legends

      What is poking? [metagame]

      June 20, 2010 /

      Janna is the new OP.

      Part of the reason I like to game is that it makes me think critically about a situation in the face of a load of variables. With a game like LoL there are almost infinite combinations of heroes and matchups, and with the different build possibilities there is always a new strategy to consider. That said, LoL does have an active meta game, meaning the popular strategy/build method for victory is constantly changing because of new patches and new heroes.

      Right now people generally think healing is the flavor of the month ticket to victory, but a couple people on the forums have laid out interesting counter arguments. One guy on the Test Realm said it’s not the healing so much as the kiting, which gives a team with a healer the ability to make the most of their healing power. An adjudicator also posted in the general discussion forums claiming that “poking” is the problem. Poking, as he puts it, is using a team’s ranged harassment abilities to wear down the opponent from a distance, forcing them away from towers and allowing your team to push. Characters like Ashe and Ezreal are great at this, though Ezreal is probably the best because his whole skill lineup is based on harassing the enemy team from afar while healing your own team.

      Whatever you want to call it, the problem remains the same. Teams with healers are successful because they can stand out of the range of fire and heal the harassment that normally brings a target low enough for your team to initiate a fight. Add to it the fact that two of the best healers in the game, Ezreal and Janna, have the best ranged harassment in the game and you’ve created a situation that far too heavily favors any team that features those two toons.

      The good news is that Zileas agrees that this is a problem and says that Riot’s focus in the next two patches will be addressing the ranged harass/healing combos that are so grossly overpowering other strats right now.

      league of legends

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