Tag: Strategy (Page 2 of 3)

LoL: Kennen burnout hit me hard

April 13, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I love Kennen, I really do, but in my winlust I may have overplayed him. It was an admittedly excellent run. I won eleven games in a row and seeing that little ninja’s glowing eyes next to a full list of green “Victory” snapshots was pretty fantastic. The thing I love most about LoL isn’t finding one champ to suit me, though, it’s the variety in the champion list, so I figure it’s time I branch out once more.

It’s been a bit of a rough go so far. I’ve played as Trist, Taric, Mundo, Ashe, Alistar, Shen, Amumu, Shaco, and Corki and only won about half of those I’ve played. Part of the problem has been comp. I was so focused on playing toons I hadn’t touched in a while that I let team comp go out the window. In one 5-man last night we didn’t have any AOE mage love. None. There’s not a doubt in my mind that we would have won had I played Kennen or Annie or Fiddle but instead we were handed a pretty tough loss to a team we outskilled.

On a high note, I’ve finally unlocked every toon in the game except Eve (who I will never unlock and never play, but that’s another post entirely). I was sitting on 7400 IP after my Kennen purchase and subsequent winning spree, and I still had Tryndamere, Cho’Gath, Kayle, and Janna to purchase.

Things are looking good for a couple games this evening, so hopefully I can rectify my losing situation. A buddy is looking to pick up Fiddlesticks so it would be great to support him with Malphite or Alistar. Of course I’ve never played Janna so I might give her a shot as well.

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LoL: Kennen Guide

April 10, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

There’s been a lot of back and forth in the community about Kennen so I thought it would be appropriate to put together a full guide. I’ve fallen in love with the midget ninja and I’ve been playing him to great success in most every game I’ve tried. Kennen is one of the strongest gankers in the game and, when played well, provides excellent utility and killing power to a solid team. He will easily carry a team if his opponents allow him any kind of farm.

I build Kennen AP, despite all the claims of his poor AP ratios. Personally, I think his AP ratios are excellent, good enough that they might catch a nerf in the near future. For runes, I roll with magic pen marks, dodge seals, cooldown reduction per level glyphs, and health quints. I go back and forth on masteries but for this guide I’ll recommend a 9/21/0 build, taking the 15% spell pen from the offense tree and making sure to grab the extra health and the 4% damage reduction from defense. The rest is up to you.

For summoner skills I take Cleanse and Ignite, but Ghost, Exhaust, and Teleport if your team needs it are all good options.

Kennen is a very powerful farmer so I always like to take him mid solo. Grab a health crystal, get to lane, and get ready to farm. At level 1 I have 820 health, which is a ton for a mid toon. Most of my opponents are somewhere around 500, so I have a huge advantage early. I take Thundering Shuriken (his Q skill) first and focus on last hitting. At level 2 and 3 take one rank of your other skills to prep for your combo. Keep last hitting to get up a decent farm.

Kennen is an excellent harasser. I take Electrical Surge at level 2 so that I can keep my mark count on my target as often as possible. Whenever I have the chance I like to Shuriken my opponent. I’ll then use either the passive from Electrical Surge or the active to keep my marks up. The active has surprisingly good range and can be used any time a nearby target has a mark. Try to always have at least two marks on your target so he’s prepped for a gank. At level 3 you can start rolling with your combo. Without boots your opponent will have a hard time avoiding Lightning Rush. I try to get a stack or two on the target and then Lightning Rush in. The stun procs some extra energy so I can Shuriken again while I’m standing on top of my target and auto attack for some harass and hopefully another mark from the Electrical surge passive. The high early health pool allows me to soak a little minion damage and bring my opponents down to half health or so. Once you have your opponent to half health you should be able to get an easy kill. Again, work up two marks on the target while you farm, regen some energy, build up your Electrical Surge passive and Lightning Rush in. Your stun procs extra energy again and with an auto attack you gain a mark, Shuriken will net you a mark, set your ignite and then auto attack the target down. As they start to run away you should have plenty of energy for a quick Electrical Surge active for a second stun. This combo is your bread and butter until you have your ult. Obviously it relies on your ability to keep marks on your target, so get some practice, even on bots if you want.

For the rest of early game you’ll main Shuriken for the cooldown reduction and increased damage. I follow that with Lightning Rush, again for cooldown reduction and because the damage scales better for the early game than Electrical Surge. Obviously, you want to take your ultimate as often as possible and save consecutive ranks of Electrical Surge for the end of the game.

You should find it very easy to farm. In the mid lane it’s important that you only last hit. You want to keep your target closer to your turret so you don’t have to dive for the kill. I typically wait until I have 1400g, which should be around level 5 or 6, before heading back to base to pick up Haunting Guise and my boots.

At 6 your ganking power only improves. If you’ve done a good job farming your Guise will give the penetration needed for some early kills on targets with low magic resistance. Stack up a mark or two (preferably two) and Lightning Rush in. Once rush hits I Shuriken and start to auto attack for the duration of the stun, planting one mark on my target and dealing a little damage. Once stun ends (which is fast, don’t get me wrong), I pop my ult, which drops another mark and then Electrical Surge for a second stun. You may have to wait a second for the energy to Surge, but if you prepped your target correctly you should have a mark waiting on your Surge passive just in case. That combo alone will kill most targets at 6. Thankfully, you brought Ignite for anyone that might be a little more durable.
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LoL: The reasons for performance-based matchmaking

April 5, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

I’ve been on a crazy string of losses recently and I’ve been trying to sort out why. I can point to all sorts of things, but a lot of my problem can be attributed to the new map. I’ve been trying out some weird comps and checking into alternative hero combinations to try to pull out some wins. There have been a few occasions, though, where my defeat was almost surely due to my teammates.

Take my daily lunchtime game today. I was playing Ezreal solo in the middle lane on Summoner’s Rift. Everything was going well. I was harassing Ashe down to gankable levels and, had I not forgotten that my Cleanse was on “D” and my Ignite on “F” and not the other way around, I would have easily taken First Blood. Sadly, the bonus gold went to the opposing Warwick for ganking our Ryze on bottom at level 4.

Immediately Ryze started calling out the team for his death, mostly blaming his lanemate, Heimer, for not using turrets as wards. Though I disagree that Heimer should waste turrets that way, especially when wards are only 90 gold, I kept my mouth shut so as not to start one of those inevitable team implosions that leads to a quick loss. It didn’t matter. Ryze was constantly in bad positions on the map despite our encouragement to back off and before 20 minutes he was 0-6 with less than 20 creep kills.

I try not to call people out too much because everyone can have a bad game, but this is something different entirely. This was a player who ended the game 0-8-0 and spent the entire match blaming his teammates for the loss. I decided to take a quick look at this previous 10 game stats and here’s what I found.

Defeat: 0-8-0
Defeat: 2-5-5
Defeat: 1-7-6
Victory: 6-7-6
Defeat: 1-16-8
Victory: 8-11-11
Victory: 4-12-8
Victory: 1-4-12
Victory: 6-10-13

As I said, I’ve been on a losing streak, so I tried to remain objective, but look at those numbers. 1-16? That’s abysmal even for a new player. His total stat count for the last 10 games is 29-80-69. Now I realize stats rarely show the whole picture, but 29-80 is a scary teammate to have, especially for someone who picks DPS toons a large majority of the time. I think his only non-assassin game was one as Morgana. The rest were Ryze, Anivia, Twitch, and a random Heimer. Those stats suggest a player that doesn’t at all know the limits of his health pool compared to his DPS or someone who is perpetually in bad map position with regard to the rest of his team. The assist count is nice, but again, most of his toons have some form of AOE, so it’s not that surprising.

In the spirit of fairness, here are my stats for my own previous 10 matches:
Defeat: 2-1-3
Victory: 3-2-7
Victory: 7-1-6
Victory: 6-3-8
Defeat: 6-5-2
Defeat: 0-3-0
Defeat: 3-5-3
Defeat: 3-7-0
Defeat: 5-5-3
Defeat: 3-3-6

For total stats we have 38-35-38. Obviously that’s much more balanced, and this is one of my worst losing streaks in months. That 3-7-0 game is ugly, and I admittedly was playing like a jackass that game, but in the context of my other stats you can easily see that it was rare misstep in a string of decent performances.

All of this is to say that the I continue to be unimpressed with the ELO system. Basing a player’s rank solely on whether he wins or loses leads to crazy matchmaking results. I want to post on the official forums and beg for a performance-based system, but the reality is its just too hard. There are too many factors to consider when looking at stats, and you can bet there would be an army of angry players that want more credit for a win that the stats say they barely contributed to. The more reliable solution is to find a group of two or four other players with whom you can regularly premade for some kind of reliable ELO. The rest of the time you’re going to catch a lot of players who have hit the right games and made it into their respective ELO brackets.

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LoL: Finding the balance on TT

April 5, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

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.

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LoL: The push strat

March 29, 2010 / Jeff Morgan

It can get a little boring running the same teamfight strategy over and over, so I like to switch things up. Lately I’ve been running a heavy push strat with a couple friends, and though we’ve been taking our time learning it’s still been a lot of fun. Here’s a quick run down of a few of your options.

When you’re going for a push strat you want to have at least one tower down under the five minute mark, but preferably a second if you can manage it. Your team comp focuses on early game durability and push. When four people surprise push a lane it’s very hard to counter without a lot of ports or quick action. Alistar is a must for keeping creep waves healed and his ability to rip up a turret. You should also take Sivir along for obvious reasons. Personally, we’ve been rolling with a Heimerdinger as well to keep up the push. He is great at mowing down minion waves to set things up. From there it’s pretty much your pick. Janna is great for AOE crowd control on your opponent and her AOE heal can grant you some extra push time. You can take Warwick then for his global attack speed buff or Taric for heals/aura and Radiance for pushing.

I’ve not tried a game with Taric yet, but the Warwick game does seem to work well. I’m planning to try Taric at some point this evening and I’ll drop some comments when I know a little more.

As for summoner spells, you need to have a few rally flags for the early game push. It keeps everyone healed up and gives you the extra damage you need to push. Taking Clarity and Heal can also keep a push alive. Basically you want your mid toon, in this case Heimer, to push the opponent back to turret. At level three you rush four people middle to take the first turret and the second if you have the health. Then it’s back to lane for farming and leveling until you have a minion wave prepped to take another turret.

If you can get an inhibitor down in 15 minutes you’ve done your job. The super minions are extremely difficult to manage at low levels which forces the other team to clear them, giving you the time to push at will. In the end it’s all about coordination. If you communicate well and move as a team you should be able to give your opponent a painful game.