Reign of Gaming

Solo Queue Heroes: January 2013

Welcome back to Solo Queue Heroes, January 2013 edition. 

Miss Fortune

I’d like to write a bit more about Miss Fortune and why she is great in solo queue right now.

MF deals a ton of damage without having to have a lot of items. She deals a lot of early damage, and keeps scaling well into the game. She doesn’t have to make much effort to trade, either. Against Graves, she outranges him and still outdamages as long as she doesn’t take a fullface buckshot, even though he has True Grit. Against Ezreal, she can stay behind minions.

Her movespeed is even better with the Season 3 changes, and her damage means it doesn’t matter what kind of champ it is, she can blow them up.

Compared to other AD carries, her ult can do the most damage in teamfights in the game. With Black Cleaver in it does a hundreds to everyone.

The test that proves this is the laziness test. Can a Miss Fortune wander around, being lazy, and just hit everyone while in the back, without making much effort to survive or get kills? Yes, I would contend. Lazy like an Ezreal who just spams two moves.

Ezreal

Speaking of, and coming from the no-duh department, Ezreal’s continuous nerfs, especially the most recent, don’t seem to affect his pick rate much. Why?

Statikk Shiv, Frozen Gauntlet. Every 2 seconds he gets to shoot a shot that does 2.25 the damage of Mystic Shot in an AOE area, and 100 magic damage to 3 other targets near it. From far away. With blink spam. They nerfed Graves and Corki’s escapes but not his.

Olaf

An Olaf that gets fed ends up killing your whole team. Olaf benefits from health and the cost of it is so low. Olaf taxes solo queue teams’ ability to coordinate or plan ahead, and there are plenty of supports that cannot peel him off. To deal with Olaf, you have to simply move faster than he does. Most people won’t all pick champions that fit this. A lot don’t know what to do.

And again, health. Jungle, top, doesn’t matter, he can chase down and stick to anyone, and he can kill anyone.

Kayle

Right now, AP Kayle is all the rage.  Why? Liandry’s Torment. When Kayle turns on her E, every auto-attack gets to proc it. Her Q has a scaling of one for each point of AP and bonus AD. Since it is a slow, it procs the double-damage.

Nashor’s Tooth is getting nerfed soon, so it will be interesting to see if it affects her. In the meantime, getting Tooth and Liandry’s gives you CDR, modest AP, and a lot of damage.

Elise

Will surely be nerfed. Can handle cheese and difficult matchups like Kayle or Jayce, can go to mid or jungle instead for a bait and switch, has flexible builds, does a lot of damage without getting high damage items. Liandry’s and Warmog’s ,yay.

Can spam a stun and 3 AP burst move’s very quickly, then do an attack speed increase move, then, after all that, immediately jump to you or another target.

She is difficult to learn to play, and some people don’t know how to play with one, so she’s not as automatic as other champions, but if you learn her and play her well, there are a lot of good matchups for her. Best of all, she’s early-game focused with a  great mid game, and in solo queue you want to win as fast as possible.

Garen

Black Cleaver. The thing about Garen is he absolutely requires hard cc, and few champs fit this category. Of the few that do, most are assassins that run away they do their thing. Garen, on the other hand, has staying power with his free defenses, his passive, and his spammed Q.

His Q breaking slows is very powerful, and if fed he is capable of singlehandedly destroying teams. Some people can get away, but then he’ll either kill one or two, or push hard. He’s great for chipping at towers. Move in, autoattack, Q it, then run away. 300 tower damage and then a speed-burst away. Lovely.

Akali

Lately I’ve seen a lot of Akalis and I feel like she’s better this season. Rylai’s is cheaper, Health is cheaper, and she has slightly better itemization. On top of that, with the Oracles nerf people buy it less. On top of that, the meta leans toward burst and ad assassins, and away from farm mids. Not that those are bad, but they are played less, and a common way to deal with Akali was simply to farm and then cc/burst her in the late game.

It feels like all the Akali players came out of retirement and are now wrecking face on everyone. Well, good for them. Bad for everyone else.

Nidalee

Nidalee benefits from the Warmog’s meta because she puts out tons of sustained damage, yet still has the burst for squishies. Also, the mobility. These were all good before, but she is making her presence known in mid, where she can avoid burst and roam well and push well. She can use traps to prevent ganks, semiward the jungle, and she outroams and outsustains a lot of mids. 

Kassadin

The multipotion start is really strong on Kassadin, as a good Kassadin will just now grab a lot of potions and keep about even in CS, then be fine when he gets to 6. The best way to deal with Kassadin is push him to turret or harass and gank him hard before 6, but with flask and the multipot start, Kassadin is now similar to Season 3 Akali. Better now, and all the old players that know him well have come out of retirement. Plus he fits the high-burst high-roam meta very well.

Singed

Rylai’s and Rod of Ages are cheaper, and he has Liandry’s now. Singed’s ult means he doesn’t have to buy much armor or MR (if any) and he can just run around and push without being stopped. Again, in a bursty meta, out bursting or surviving burst are great options. It seems easier for him to disrupt uncoordinated than he used to be.

Evelynn

PSA: she is still good, you just actually have to be a good Eve now. She also is less likely to be banned, so while she is not broken she’s great for roaming and picking off the bad players on the other team. Jungle Eve is more viable now also. With a nerfed Ult, grabbing a Wriggle’s and Sheen isn’t as bad as it used to be. Remember, he moves still scale off AD, so this works as long as you play her well.

Not stupid like before, but still strong and great for facerolling in the queue.

Special Mention: Nunu/Cait

Screw this lane combo. There is about no lane that can straight up beat it without jungle ganks. They’ll outpush, out cs, out roam, and outkill you the whole game unless someone else helps. This is a rare thing at bottom lane in public play, but if you can duo this combo, you will usually win. It’s not quite Teemo level, but it also serves as a global taunt, and they are a great combo for counter-ganking and turning ganks into failures, too, making it one of the easiest lanes to get fed.

Nunu nerfs don’t matter either. This lane is still a pain.

Best,

Old Man Eyebrows 

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