So, anyone playing League of Legends?

[Azael]

Ghost/Flash Viktor and Teleport/Ignite Hecarim are both pretty cool choices.

 

[Azael]

http://www.reignofgaming.net/news/30886-unofficial-pbe-patch-notes-for-2-27-2015

So, top lane Nautilus next thing? That E buff looks delicious. Shame about losing some damage on W, but the new jungle item is fucking perfect for him. I knew I was right to go back to one of my old favorite junglers.

 

[Erzherzog]

As a Xerath main its important to note that a lot of matchups that could exploit the weaknesses of immobile mages have been needed at the same time burst mages have been nerfed relative to sustain damage mages. And then since were far away from worlds Zed is not being played.

Opens up the mid lane for guys like Viktor that does a lot of things other mages do, just worse. Less reliable mass cc than Or I, less waveclear than Xerath or Ziggs, split pushes but worse than TF. High damage but not on Cass like levels but can do ALL these things well.

 

[HanoverF]

http://www.reignofgaming.net/news/30886-unofficial-pbe-patch-notes-for-2-27-2015

So, top lane Nautilus next thing? That E buff looks delicious. Shame about losing some damage on W, but the new jungle item is fucking perfect for him. I knew I was right to go back to one of my old favorite junglers.

I stopped playing Naurilus when they took away his wall hops, then the next patch they built wall jumping into Riven's Q because "emergent gameplay" huehuehue

 

[Gay-Lussac]

PlanHex if you smite the frog, you won't be able to take down the buff on your own or at least you'll come out of the fight with 100-200hp and then you have no choice but to back. And even if you play a champ that comes out with 40% hp after getting the buff (pots taken into account), you're vulnerable to counter-jungling and can't gank any lane.

That's kinda the point. They wanted to get rid of the 3:00-3:30 ganks. Clearing one half of the jungle, backing and doing the other is the current style for a lot of champs, I think.

Also, who are you playing as exactly?

The 3:00 - 3:30 gank will always be really useful, it's dumb of Riot trying to change the jungle like that because the good junglers are those that can still play the old way and gank early. All Riot did to junglers was increase the importance of late game but their changes in S5 have only reduced their gold income and introduced pointless mini-games because the winning moves are the same. No wonder jungle mains hate the new jungle.

They're not trying to get rid of early ganking, they're trying to make it more a big risk / big reward kind of thing. If you snowball a lane early you got yourself a big lead, but if you try to gank after your first buff and get nothing out of it, or, worse, if you die in the process, you've set yourself back just as much as if you would have gotten ahead if you were successful. This makes it so early ganking is no longer a no-brainer automatic move for every jungler (can't tell how many counter ganks I got off in top lane after my first clear in season 4), which was part of the reason why Elise and Lee Sin were so dominant for so long: they just had the best lvl 3 ganking kits in the entire game. So that hurt all other jungler in the process. In the end, the goal behind curbing early aggression was to increase diversity and give tanks a chance to compete with fighters in the jungle, since tanks can't clear as fast or usually gank as effectively on early lvls (and if they do, getting counterganked by a fighter usually spells doom for them).

They failed miserably, obviously, but I think this was a step in the right direction, and maybe with the new jungler enchantment (which looks awesome, by the way, my main gripe with juggernaut was that it just gave tenacity and a bunch of health) they'll actually make some real progress for jungler diversity in the pro scene for the first time in ages. The one thing I think they may still need to address is how machete is supposed to be a one size fits all jungle item. I think they may need to make it so it's like the support items, where they each start with different stats from the beginning, because tanks are still sort of screwed in their first clear (but I guess that may just be balanced, will have to wait and see the impact of cinderhulk).

EDIT: Oh damn, Hecarim jungle is now so much better. I love sunfire cape on him because of the healing from his W, now you can just go Cinderhulk, Merc threads, Triforce, Frozen Heart, Spirit Visage. Or, for a tankier build that gets to resistances sooner (sometimes a necessity when their damage is too split), Cinderhulk, Merc Threads, Gauntlet, Visage. That's already a perfect build (health, CDR, armor and MR and what I consider to be his 2 core tanky items, Visage and Sunfire) with only 4 items (well, 3 and boots), anything else is just icing on the cake. Eager to try this out.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

I wonder about why Silver/Gold faggets almost don't help their jungler at the frog/golems.

When I came back to LoL a few months ago, I immediately realized my champ wasn't strong enough to clear all jungle in 1 pass and needed some extra help compared to how it was before. I asked and asked for help (smiteless frog/golems) in all games, and they all told me to fuck off, cause they'd "lose 2-3 creeps".

Then I saw a few LCS games where the jungler is helped much much more, often is helped not only with the golems/frog, but even with the buff.

And so the question is... Is it a valid argument that as an ADC, you might lose a few creeps, then the enemy might get 3d level before you do, jump you and therefore it's critical for you not to help the jungler? Sounds like bullshit to me. 2-3 creeps in terms of gold is irrelevant (and you know when you might get jumped, so just play safe), and the jungler is crippled if not helped properly, loses a shitload of time because he needs to back prematurely. The whole jungle routine is fucked. If I am right, the why the fuck aren't they EVER helping correctly? Everyone retarded at this elo or am I wrong about it? I'm very, very confused.

If they get to lane late their laning opponents will hit lvl 2 before they do, but honestly it's not the end of the world, specially since Riot has toned down the relevance of early lvls in season 5 (specifically to counter act this). You can give a decent leash and only lose like 1, maybe 2, creeps at most, so it's mostly just your teammates being selfish cunts. It's far more important in solo que to get the good graces of your jungler than to hit lvl 2 before your opponent does, in my opinion.

What you're referring to in the LCS is the buddy jungling system, where the top laner clears the jungle along with his jungler, soaking some of the exp and even taking a little bit of the gold. The reasoning for this is that when teams lane swap it's better for the top laner to soak some XP in the jungle than to go into lane at lvl 1 and just be zoned out by the other team's ADC and support and then basically be screwed for most of the rest of the game. So you'll never, ever see this outside of pro games, since people don't lane swap in solo que.

PlanHex if you smite the frog, you won't be able to take down the buff on your own or at least you'll come out of the fight with 100-200hp and then you have no choice but to back. And even if you play a champ that comes out with 40% hp after getting the buff (pots taken into account), you're vulnerable to counter-jungling and can't gank any lane.

Azael I try different junglers. The ones that aren't tanks - have this problem.

If you're having trouble, I've heard the best first clear option (healthiest) is doing red buff first, then wolves (weakest camp, I believe) and then blue buff.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

At least even Reddit is now really upset with the direction the game is going.

Stuff like Veigar getting the shaft after Riot promised buffs after DFG removal, and a complete and blatant overbuff on Ahri.

Their champion favouritism is finally pissing people off. I thought I'd never live to see this day.

The new jungle (and the ten thousands nerfs for junglers) and mobility emphasis on every champion in every role (except maybe support - that's where old immobile mid laners go now) is being discussed heavily.

Are you serious? People complaint about game balance, champion favouristism and mobility creep at least since season 3 (when I started playing). Cassiopeia has 0 mobility and is seeing heavy competitive play, funny how you don't see people mention that. Someone also posted Viktor games above, and he has nothing but a movement speed boost. Hey, look, here's Karthus, another completely immobile late game hyper carry, also in a competitive game: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueofleg...oiler_ogn_spring_postmatch_discussion_week_7/

Riot is aware of the problems, they can't just wave a magic wand and dissolve them all, and maybe they take too long to fix things, but the cass rework is a sure step in the right direction.

And "junglers" aren't being nerfed for the sake of being made weaker or less impactful, they're making systemic changes to the jungle because they realised just giving tanks a better clearing tool (quill coat, which even came with a free ward) just made them overpowered in solo que, while still not making them viable in competitive (see my above post about why they made early ganking so risky). They were also trying to make counterjungling a viable strategy instead of just nonstop season 4 ganking (hence the increased respawn timers in camps) and also trying to diminish poaching from the jungle by laners by making the camps hit harder and by giving junglers more gold for them over laners.

Maybe junglers in general were made somewhat weaker because their income was reduced, but soon enough they amped up the gold reward for clearing with with an upgraded jungle item. Now, all of this is explained in patch notes and forum discussions by Rioters themselves, but the vast majority of redditors are bronze-gold players (that's most of the player population anyway) who just jump into discussions to bitch about how Riot hates junglers, hates their champion, hates their mom or whatever. They could even say: "Riot, you're failing", instead of "Riot, why do you hate me?", but bitches just don't know better.

Oh, and about Veigar, bear in mid that he was being banned and played regularly as a support in other regions (used once in the west by Cloud 9, to great success). What does Veigar bring as a support? A very mediocre poke through his Q, which completely loses the AP stacking functionality as a support, an unreliable source of moderate damage through his W and a AP burster nuke on long cooldown through his ult, which will only chunk an enemy mage, since he won't be building AP as a support. That means that the champion was being regularly played in pro games just for one ability, his E, which apparently was so strong of a stun that it made up for the rest of his shitty kit as a support. By reworking that ability, maybe they can make the rest of his kit significantly more powerful with followup changes, and maybe he'll actually see competitive play in the mid lane someday. Cassiopeia's rework was also something that took several patches to be made successful.

 

[markec]

Oh, and about Veigar, bear in mid that he was being banned and played regularly as a support in other regions (used once in the west by Cloud 9, to great success). What does Veigar bring as a support? A very mediocre poke through his Q, which completely loses the AP stacking functionality as a support, an unreliable source of moderate damage through his W and a AP burster nuke on long cooldown through his ult, which will only chunk an enemy mage, since he won't be building AP as a support. That means that the champion was being regularly played in pro games just for one ability, his E, which apparently was so strong of a stun that it made up for the rest of his shitty kit as a support. By reworking that ability, maybe they can make the rest of his kit significantly more powerful with followup changes, and maybe he'll actually see competitive play in the mid lane someday. Cassiopeia's rework was also something that took several patches to be made successful.

As someone who plays with Veigar I can say that his E is really powerful and nerfing it came as a no surprise. Problem of the rework and why people are raging about it so much is that its such a shitty job that anyone who has more then a few brain cells can see that now he is completely useless, and people wonder how exactly was this massive nerf approved. They said that due removal of DFG champs that relied on it like Veigar and Ahri will be buffed, Ahri was buffed and Veigar got massive nerfs. Saying to Veigar mains to chill out and play someone else and maybe in few months and patches he might, might be viable again is not something that will calm them down.

 

[Renegen]

Yeah, he got nerfed for his support play not his mid. He was balanced in mid with insta stun et all. What I'm sad is the fact that his Q got changed from a targeted skill to a skillshot (with a fancy mechanic). How many champions must have the Riot patented line skillshot that is also used for harass? He'll get his buffs for sure, I hope he stays as a burst mage. I forsee his buffs being a slight buff of E and another skill, say W.

 

[Jozoz]

The thing is with his E nerfed so heavily, Veigar's W is so much worse.

 

[markec]

Q is skill shot that hit minions so good luck poking anyone with it, even if you can farm more AP with it now whats the point of having 1000 AP if you cant hit anything. W is now useless since only way to land it is to first stun someone with E and E now can stun only if the opponent is blind. R has big nerf on damage, so now you can only dream of 100>0 anyone anymore. But a good thing is they left R to be targetable skill so your new tactic should be hug tower, poke with R, hug tower and wait for cooldown on R to poke again.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Isn't his Q a partial pass through skill shot? It can go through the first unit it hits.

 

[Erzherzog]

Compared to a Lissandra Q it is not shit for distance. Maybe you hit close in targets. MAYBE.

Here's an idea to make Veigar's stun not completely useless, have it instant stun on the part of the circle closest to him, maybe like 60 degrees of the circle and then both sides can extend until they meet, stunning as they fill in. Can only be stunned once etc.

Sidenote: Oh hey, paiN gaming's comms are in English so that makes watching Brazil league games a little more fun.

Finally got my internet upgraded today and I'm up early thanks to work so I'm being the biggest nerd ever and watching the minor regions today.

Russia is....bad. Probably the worst unless LATAM or OCE is worse. Japan doesn't have a server yet and they look better.

Further sidenote: Kabum beats Alliance at worlds and doesn't even make it to playoffs in Brazil. Maybe Brazil really is decent at this game. Turkey's top teams are on the level of Challenger EU teams if not slightly better, wonder if Brazil's best can hang with low level NA teams. I mean everyone else beats Coast, right? Would be cool to see a tournament involving LATAM, BR, NA challenger teams maybe even toss in OCE and/or JP.

And every single other league has better dragon indicators than the LCS. Can't see shit on the LCS indicator.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Sidenote: Oh hey, paiN gaming's comms are in English so that makes watching Brazil league games a little more fun.

Finally got my internet upgraded today and I'm up early thanks to work so I'm being the biggest nerd ever and watching the minor regions today.

Russia is....bad. Probably the worst unless LATAM or OCE is worse. Japan doesn't have a server yet and they look better.

Further sidenote: Kabum beats Alliance at worlds and doesn't even make it to playoffs in Brazil. Maybe Brazil really is decent at this game. Turkey's top teams are on the level of Challenger EU teams if not slightly better, wonder if Brazil's best can hang with low level NA teams. I mean everyone else beats Coast, right? Would be cool to see a tournament involving LATAM, BR, NA challenger teams maybe even toss in OCE and/or JP.

And every single other league has better dragon indicators than the LCS. Can't see shit on the LCS indicator.

I can't watch CBLoL (Bronzil's championship league). The casting is really bad, they act as if though they're contractually obligated not to say anything bad about the players, always throwing compliments and never giving any actual criticism. I mean, this one time I saw a team pick a horrible team comp, had 3 massive tanks (including freaking Sion mid lane), support and GRAVES, who's one of the worst ADC for sustained damage, and the casters were like "Omg, their team is soo tanky, the enemy will have a lot of trouble getting through those massive tanks :]" instead of going "OMFG WTF are they doing with that team comp?!". LCS used to be a bit like this IIRC, but the casters have been a lot more vocal lately about in-game mistakes.

The Kabum team you're seeing isn't the one that went to worlds, pretty sure they pratically disbanded after last year, so that might explain why they didn't make playoffs. I think the disparity in skill level between all regions is probably becoming less pronounced, but it's still gonna take a while until a BR tean manages to give consistently give a top NA or EU team a run for it's money. The best ones are probably at a similar lvl to the lower brackets NA and EU teams, though. Kabum's laning seemed to be solid enough at world's, they just fell apart with the play making (jungler ganks, and everything else past laning phase).

 

[Erzherzog]

I don't understand Portuguese so I guess that helps me watch it.

As far as casters go I feel like Riot has set the tone to have them act as salesmen instead of legitimate analysts. The list of casters I can even tolerate is no longer than 3 names. I'm sure that goes for pretty much any region.

And the majority of Kabum players from 2014 worlds are still on Kabum orange, including their midlaner, whos ability to lane against Froggen was about 75% of why they even had a chance to win that match. One of the two they axed was by far their worst player as well...

 

[dibens]

Men, my LoL career is officially



As my team's top, will do extensive research with reworked Sion, seems pretty damn fun. Also, god bless improved W on Kennen. Trundle is slowly shaping up to be my new main, god damn does he melt turrets. I'm loving the new map, new exits from bases and jungle/totem rework. The game is just so much more enjoyable now. 10/10 would Bronze 5 again

 

[bloodlover]

NA casters are the reason I don't follow NA games. LCK has the best casters followed by EU (though they have their share of shit casters as well).

 

[Erzherzog]

EU has best casters? The lost their best two. Deficio is solid but not for an entire match by himself and not for an entire day.

NA has Kobe, at this point I wait for that guys rant about something he finds stupid because it's either spot on or like an old man rambling but either way I'm entertained.

Plus he regularly calls out bad ideas or poorly thought out plays.

 

[Renegen]

Men, my LoL career is officially



As my team's top, will do extensive research with reworked Sion, seems pretty damn fun. Also, god bless improved W on Kennen. Trundle is slowly shaping up to be my new main, god damn does he melt turrets. I'm loving the new map, new exits from bases and jungle/totem rework. The game is just so much more enjoyable now. 10/10 would Bronze 5 again

Congrats. Sion top is pretty good if you like tanky top laners, he's really safe and he's insanely tanky if you're good with that playstyle. Kennen top is making a comeback in S5, he has a high win rate again. The problem with Kennen has always been that he's a lane bully that's really hard to stomp hard enough to actually win games with him, I don't know why his popularity is increasing nothing has changed. Trundle is alright, he counters tanks in top lane and has the advantage of having a lot of good matchups vs the lane bullies like Renekton, Trundle players tend to be really good with him and he's a monster late game. The top lane meta is kinda weird right now a bit of everything, it's all about using your teleport effectively.

 

[Markman]

Dude with no hands, Diamond 4 streaming now http://www.twitch.tv/crippled_kid Amazing.

IEM groups were announced yesterday.
http://en.intelextrememasters.com/n...asters-katowice-groups-for-league-of-legends/
Awesome stuff, C9 vs GE Tigers and Gambit vs CJ Entus. Its a bit of shame they gonna do Best of 1 qualifiers, you got teams travel across the world to play 2 games and then go back.

Unless EU teams drop off in first 2 games, that is.
We know consistency is one of the biggest traits EU teams got.

 

[Jozoz]

Kennen's ult had a pretty nice buff recently.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Urgot's shield is surprisingly potent. I tried it on the PBE. Seems solid.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

I don't understand Portuguese so I guess that helps me watch it.

As far as casters go I feel like Riot has set the tone to have them act as salesmen instead of legitimate analysts. The list of casters I can even tolerate is no longer than 3 names. I'm sure that goes for pretty much any region.

And the majority of Kabum players from 2014 worlds are still on Kabum orange, including their midlaner, whos ability to lane against Froggen was about 75% of why they even had a chance to win that match. One of the two they axed was by far their worst player as well...

Yeah, their mid laner was a beast. You're probably more in the know than I am, I rarely ever catch up on CBLoL.

My addiction kicked in yesterday and I actually reinstalled the game. First impression is that I definitely preffer Season 4 over 5, though it may just have been a few bad impressions, along with the fact that I was playing on a toaster and had some serious lag spikes (played around 12 matches). I got 4 games in a row at the end of the night that were just a bunch of messy fights that lead nowhere, my teammates just refused to group no matter how much I pinged them to do anything. At most they gathered for dragon or baron, but after that everybody scattered back to farming, going on for 50+ minutes. There was always someone backing to shop, backing to push a side lane, backing for whatever.

I think the thing is that when dragons actually gave gold instead of the near useless buffs for 1st-4th dragon (near useless for non-organized play at least), you could actually secure them and your team would snowball in a way that even if someone got caught or you decided to fight 5v4, your team would still usually come out ahead. Another thing I noticed is that those laser turrets make dives so freaking risky; then you have to get baron to crack into their base and even then they can usually waveclear without the turret sustaining significant damage unless your ADC knows what it's doing in a siege. In three of those four games we got Baron and my team did fuck all with it, despite constant pings for us to group. Shit was so tiring and frustrating I actually burned out immediately and unninstalled the game again. Could just be that my normal game MMR is just that low.

Have you guys noticed an increase in average game time this season?

EDIT: Oh and the jungle changes. Not entirely sure how I feel about them. Getting cheesed lvl 2 is even more unavoidable and frustrating than before, since you'll usually have no smite at your buff and I absolutely hate that scuttle crab because that shit moves all over and is an ass to take down.

 

[Bester]

Could just be that my normal game MMR is just that low.

Did you play a new champ? First 5 games (I think) with a new champ - you're always placed with bronze type of players to "compensate" for your inexperience with the champ. Also leaving for a long time = mmr decays, obviously.

 

[Renegen]

Wonderful EL vs CW game on the EU LCS, the game was so insane it went to 70 minutes. Elements at one point had 5 dragons, baron, 2 inhibitors down and couldnt close it against the Wolves and they even had the better teamfighting team! Truly an exciting game, despite long periods of nothing happening too.

I typically hate the EU casters but the french casting team makes the EU LCS bearable to watch.