Tag: support (Page 3 of 3)

      State of Heimerdinger

      June 30, 2010 /

      Blast Zone Heimerdinger.

      Heimerdinger has slowly risen to become one of the champions I see most in-game. Though known for his incredible pushing power, he is also an excellent defender and farmer, giving him the items needed to put out big damage over the course of the game. With yesterday’s grenade buff, I think Heimer is among the strongest support champions, despite his turret vs. tower nerf.

      I was pretty shocked to see Heimer catch a little buff. Yes, his turrets deal less damage but he can toss more grenades so his net effect on towers is just about the same. The real key to Heimer is getting a strong early farm and good early magic penetration. Magic penetration, especially early in the game, increases the damage output of your missiles for some nice harass. My personal preference is to max turrets and missiles side by side and stand well back behind my creeps so that should my opponent come to harass they catch a missile in the face.

      Heimer is strong in teamfights because he gives his team control over positioning. What could have been a successful chase through the woods quickly turns into death for you or multiple teammates if Heimer comes to back up his teammate. The slow from turrets is great CC and the heal his ultimate provides can keep a push alive. In short, Heimer is one of the most frustrating characters to play against if played well.

      Phreak dropped into a recent forum thread to say they (the devs) aren’t quite done with Heimer. He specifically calls out the Heimer vs towers situation, which is really the worst of it. If his team has good ranged harass, he’ll stand by and lob grenades until your towers are gone and there’s precious little you can do about it.

      Heimer is unique because he gets to play a different game than everyone else. While not quite the micro fun of a Chen or Meepo from DotA, he still has big control over the positioning of teamfights and the lane creeps. If you’re playing Heimer right now, enjoy your day in the sun. It won’t last forever.

      league of legends

      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: What’s the Nidalee consensus?

      February 17, 2010 /

      Nidalee.Phreak dropped by the forums today to ask for a little feedback on Nidalee. I was pretty interested in the topic, mostly because I think Nidalee occupies a very weird spot in the LoL spread of champions. She’s definitely a support toon, but she’s capable of carrying a team to victory and utterly terrifying in any 1v1 situation. The most surprising part of the discussion? People think she’s balanced.

      I don’t have huge gripes about Nidalee, just minor issues that I think could be tweaked. The real problem I see is that Nidalee can fill every gap a team may have. She heals (one of the most mana efficient in the game), has map awareness, provides a great pushing buff, has incredible escapability and, as such, is one of the best chasers in the game. Add to it all that cat form is excellent for farming with virtually zero consequence and you have a champion that feels far from balanced. It’s not that any of these in and of itself is OP, but that giving them all to a single character results in a team slot that heavily tips the scales. Consider a well played Nidalee versus a well played Nasus (support DPS) or Morgana (support DPS/CC) and I think you’ll find she offers most of the other’s benefits, with the exception of snare/slow, plus a whole lot more.

      You can find the full contents of the post in the general discussion forums.

      Development, league of legends, PC

      LoL: Support Runes

      February 17, 2010 /

      Support rune page.As my ELO has improved it’s become increasingly important to have a good mix of tank, support, and DPS on a team. I’m plenty willing to fill that role for my team, so I like to have a good rune page to support it. The problem is, I like to play a lot of different toons, so I like my rune pages to be applicable to just about anyone. That’s a tough thing to pull off for support, but here’s what I’m working with.

      For now, I focus on CD reduction and a little mana regen and some armor. The last is because I was playing an armor stack Rammus for a bit (lot of fun if you haven’t tried it – just make sure you itemize properly against mages). With my 9/0/21 mastery, I’m sitting at almost 20% cooldown reduction, which is great for someone like Alistar or Rammus. I tend to use this page for toons like Blitzcrank and Nasus if I’m playing support as well. The real frustration comes from the red runes. There just isn’t much that makes sense for a lot of toons. Most of the support/utility marks are such low percentages that spending the IP doesn’t make sense.

      I’ll probably continue to mess with various setups using Tier 1 or 2 runes, just to see what I like. I would hope for a mark buff, but I don’t think that’s very likely. What do you like to go for? Magic Resist? Armor? The scaling buffs?

      league of legends, PC, Strategy

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