• Making the Most of the Item Sets Tab

    The item sets tab is out and for the non-genius-level-player (or even for someone who is, perhaps), this can highly change your conception, understanding, and playing of the game. It can also be a huge timesink.

    So, yay or nay? I’ve spent a bit of time playing around with it and have some suggestions on pitfalls and how to maximize its usefulness.

    Limitations

    The first unfavorable thing I noticed is that the actual tool isn’t friendly to people who don’t know the items well as it’s a single column only to show them all. Unlike in the actual game, there’s no way to look at the items in a big grid format, which makes it a pain to find the items while in this tool. For that reason I highly recommend you play and think about builds elsewhere. There are better spots online for playing and thinking about item builds where you can access the items more quickly or see a bigger selection of them. Even a legal pad can be a better canvas for creating builds.

    While the items are out of date, http://s3.microtony.com/ lets you look at the in-game items  and more importantly, lets you see the current recommended items to let you see how much you wish to keep and how much you wish to discard. Keep in mind that the recommended items list is still going to be accessible for any character. If recommended items has the majority of the stuff you’d use anyway, building a tab is not worth the effort.

    The second unfavorable thing is that the sets are machine-side and not server-side. This means that if you make an item set, it is only on the computer you made it on, not your account. This doesn’t affect everyone, but if it affects you you’ve obviously noticed and been hesitant to make too many tabs.

    A program that lets you rip builds from another person and put into client is coming down the road. And a place that lets you see other people’s build and how they’re arranged should be out within a week or two if it isn’t by the time this article is posted. You can save yourself a lot of time waiting for other builds to come out and sticking those in.

  • Why Blue Ezreal Is the Real Deal

     

     

    What is Blue Ezreal?

    In the last month or two a different way of building and playing Ezreal has come to light, and it’s called “Blue Ezreal” because of the color of the items used. The concept around it is to abuse Ezreal’s moves  by almost maxing cooldown, having a large amount of mana and mana regen, and kiting with Iceborne Gauntlet.

    We’ve had some chance to see it in play and I wanted to not just discuss the pros and cons but actually run some hard numbers on it compared to regular Ezreal.

    Blue Ezreal builds the items up top: Spirit of the Lizard Elder, Manamune/Muramana, Iceborn Gauntlet, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Last Whisper, and Blade of the Ruined King. This provides for 39 cooldown with the masteries in the offense tree and plenty of additional effects to any given poke.

    Let’s go over the build order and compare it to a standard build. A standard build is open to discussion, but I chose to use Doran’s Blade, Bloodthirster, Infinity Edge, Berserker’s Greaves,  Last Whisper, and Blade of the Ruined King. Why do I use Doran’s Blade on the standard build? Because it costs as much money to max out Blue Ezreal’s build as it does to get those five items on a standard Ezreal. We’ll get to those differences when comparing them in a moment, but for now let’s look at the actual comparison. On either side here we have both Ezreals at various stages of the game with a typical build order.

    Keep in mind I'm ignoring masteries, runes, and base-stats--this is about the difference between the builds only; I don’t take same items, such as Doran’s Blade, into account because this is a comparison. Blue Ezreal ignores the crit masteries and usually takes 2 or 3 lifesteal quints, but neither one is necessarily different from the other and the difference is minor. 

  • What to Start at Top and Mid

                                                                     

    Well, we can’t buy 13 pots anymore. We can’t even buy 9 pots anymore. We can’t even buy an Elixir anymore!

    Oh wait, we can buy that at least. It just costs 40% more. With Elixir of Fortitude costing 350 instead of 250, that would leave you only able to buy three potions, which is not enough sustain against five. Flask used to be insurance, and now with the increased costs it is now a gamble. Get first blood or send them back quickly or they’ll at the very least outsustain you, and you’ll be out 350 gold.

    No more red elixirs, then. So what to start?

    If you’re at bottom lane, this won’t affect you. If you’re jungle it won’t either. So, what we’re really asking is what we should be starting when we’re going to middle or top lanes. I’ll do top first. 

  • What Should You Finish First as a Bruiser Jungler?

     

     

    Junglers typically don’t make much money and are expected to build defensive items. So if you don’t get fed and can’t get a Giant’s belt , what do you get?

    You should expect to get health, and you likely won’t be able to get a Giant’s Belt early on. That leaves you with a Ruby Crystal. You can get the following defensive items with a Ruby Crystal:

    Warmog’s: Still needs a Giant’s Belt. Maybe something you’ll still want to get, but no guarantee you’ll get it right away.

    Phage: this item just isn’t what it used to be, and you certainly don’t want to rush it. It might serve little use as you’ll never finish it, or if you do, a Mallet won’t mean much because of how late the game got to.

    Black Cleaver: not a bad item, but finishing it is costly. We’re talking about a typical game, not a non-fed game.

    Haunting Guise: see above. Liandry’s is what you want if you’re jungling, and Guise isn’t good for clearing. We're talking about bruisers anyway. 

    Catalyst: nah.

    Aegis: a possibility. Every game a jungler or support should get this; we’ve covered it numerous times. In a gank, you increase everyone’s stats. It has regen now.

    Kindlegem: yes. This builds into Spirit Visage (unlikely), Shurelya’s (no time to get this), Zeke’s (unlikely), Locket (OP), or Spirit of the Ancient Golem (a lovely item).

    Locket: cooldown, cheap, has a great active, has health and armor, but no MR or aura like Aegis.

    Spirit of the Ancient Golem: has the most health, gives tenacity early, helps with clearing, gives cooldown like the Locket.

    As a jungler, in a typical game you should always be getting a Ruby Crystal early on and we’ve whittled it down to three choices of what you’ll build it into first: Spirit of the Ancient Golem, Aegis of the Legion, or Locket of the Iron Solari, all good jungler items. All three of these items build out of Ruby Crystal and a rejuv bead and supply more health and regen upon completion. The cost from them is 1850, 2000, and 2150. Two supply cooldown, and two supply benefits to teammates.

  • Anti-Guides: Thresh

    We all wondered to ourselves: this guy doesn’t seem to be picked a lot, he looks hard to play, no one knows what to do with him. But oh man, that set of abilities. I wonder if he’ll get picked a lot in the LCS?

    That pretty much summarizes the history of Thresh’s quick rise to prominence. He’s only been out three months, has a passive that serves as a weakness, and he’s hard to play.

    He’s also very strong, popularized by his play in the LCS, and now he is someone that is a common solo queue ban.

    Where you'll see him/her: Thresh can be creatively played in a solo lane, but he was designed to be and is played best as a support. People can get caught, blitz style, or think they have a kill, and oh, Thresh lantern allows the rash ad carry to be forgiven, and get a kill with no death.

    He’s very strong in lane and if people don’t realize this (and many don’t yet), he’ll always win the trades and the all-in fights, which is what it usually takes to get a kill in bottom lane.

    Worst Case Scenario: super huge guy that is built like a linebacker, and is impossible to get past. Unstoppable pushing machine that is very hard to kill, makes his team hard to kill, and will kill anyone not being careful.