Tag: tournaments

      Did the Flash nerf work?

      November 19, 2011 /

      The latest LoL patch included both a range and cooldown nerf to Flash, the game’s most popular Summoner Spell. As a result, I’ve been trying to rely on the skill less, choosing skills like Cleanse and Ghost to pair with my combat spell. It hasn’t been great. In fact, most of the time I’ve just wished that I was using Flash.

      It seems most of the pros agree. I watched a little bit of the MLG tournament today and saw 10 Flashes in several of their games. That’s right. Every player in the game took Flash. I can’t imagine Riot is too happy about the change, but it’s also difficult to imagine a Flash nerf that doesn’t completely remove the skill from viability. The big problem, at least as I see it, is that the strength of Flash is binary. It’s either a big enough jump to be useful or it isn’t. There is no middle ground.

      So much of LoL is about seizing the moment that Flash will always be strong or completely useless. Even if Flash had a cooldown of eight minutes, the threat of a Flash-stun would probably be enough to keep the skill in play. Positioning is just too important to the game.

      I will say this – making the other spells more appealing might be a decent way to compete with Flash. I’ve been using Cleanse a lot but I’ve been disappointed by the cooldown. I’m not saying Cleanse is the spell to fix Flash – I remember the days when every single carry took Cleanse and I don’t want it back – but reducing the cooldowns on and improving the effectiveness of the rest of the Summoner Spells could do a lot for Summoner Spell diversity.

      What have you seen? Has the nerf had any effect on how often you see Flash? Are players using any other skills in its place?

      league of legends, Patches

      Is tournament play killing LoL?

      July 22, 2011 /

      LoL Tournaments.

      For my Champ of the Week features I always try to play a mix of normal and ranked games because I think it’s important to see how each champion plays in the different environments. In my experience, ranked games tend to be a bit more focused – teams attempt to pick solid team comps, fill each of the roles, and at least someone on the team will try to ward and control dragon. Normal games are a bit less organized – I see very little warding, team comp is kind of all over the place, and map control isn’t as important as getting kills. On the whole, I think normal games tend to be much more fast paced and much more fun, but that’s been changing and I think the tournaments are to blame.

      Lately my normal games have been against focused players with tournament comps. I just got out of a game against a Rammus/Anivia/Xin Zhao/Lee Sin/Soraka. Was it a perfect comp? No, but it was way out of my team’s league, and the fact that they also had Clairvoyance made it even worse. The game went long, mostly because I think it was full of decent players, but it was insanely boring. Let’s face it, the cautious play seen in high-ELO matches just isn’t that fun in practice. Kill counts are painfully low and most of the game is a dance about who will initiate a fight. That’s not what got me into League of Legends in the first. I fell in love with LoL because it was active and engaging and rewarded aggressive gameplay.

      I’m not complaining that the game is getting more challenging. In fact, I would love it if that were the case. I would love to have closer matches. I would love to see less surrender votes. Instead, I’m seeing slow tedious games that make me reconsider playing more than a game in each sitting. The excitement is rapidly disappearing from the game as more players turn to the tournament meta.

      The only cause I can see for the shift in gameplay is the accessibility of tournament streams. I think it’s wonderful that League’s competitive game is getting a lot of attention, but it’s making the lower ELOs a boring mess to play. As this dominant metagame trickles further down the ELO chart it becomes increasingly important for Riot to make major adjustments to the game. Support has to get nerfed. Tanky DPS has to go away. Riot needs to address all of the attrition reduction mechanics in the game, not just the new ones.

      What do you think? Are you seeing the same comps every game? Does the game feel less exciting to you or is it just me?

      Current Affairs, Editorial, league of legends

      LoL: Where are the competitive champs

      March 22, 2010 /

      One of these toons doesn't belong.I understand that balancing a game like League of Legends must be pretty tough. If you cater too much to the best players you’ll make a lot of casual players extremely unhappy. The skill ceiling for many toons will simply be too high, exacerbating the gap between competitive players and casuals. Too far in the other direction and the game seems to lack a team dynamic.

      As things currently stand, most players organize the champs into tier lists to give a sense of where they fit within a team dynamic. Since the holidays, Riot has released a fair number of champs, only one of which really makes the highest tiers – Nidalee. She’s often first pick in competitive play and typically swings the battle in a big way. With every new champion announcement I always wonder if we’ll see a new competitive champion, but it has yet to happen. Ezreal is probably the closest, but next to Nidalee he seems fairly lackluster. She has many of his benefits plus better map control and more gankability. She’s also much more mana efficient.

      In part, I think the lack of more “top tier” champions is that competitive play typically involves a ban system. Implement too strong a hero and it gets banned immediately. Since the Jax buff I see him banned first in every draft game I play and for good reason. If he gets any farm at all he kills entire teams. I would like to see the release of a some top tier champions, though. Currently the best picks for tanks are Alistar, Taric, Malphite and Amumu, probably in that order (Taric and Alistar could be reversed depending on your team). Most games see two of those banned, leaving few options for either team.

      I’m going to keep my fingers crossed for the next champion release after Shen. Shen, like Gragas, will likely be in an odd position with regard to a team. He could fit well with other AOE disable toons, like a Malphite, but there will likely be better options. Malphite ult with an Annie ult is infinitely better because of the AOE damage from Tibbers. More often than not, if you’re living for more than 10 seconds or so in a team fight it’s because your team is dying or the other team is woefully low on DPS, in which case you were likely going to win anyway.

      Development, league of legends

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