Reign of Gaming

Who are the best top laners in the NA and EU LCS scenes, and what champions they are playing most and best? Find out that -- and more -- after the break.

Doran's Shield has been an extremely dominant item in Season 4, but with patch 4.3, it received a huge nerf. Rushing in to fill the gulf has been Doran's Blade, melee and ranged auto-attackers, and AP tops. Find out more after the break!

Super Week has come and gone, and the data left behind is extremely meaningful due to one important change that hit the competitive field right before the games: the Doran’s Shield nerf.

TL;DR Reign of Gaming is moving forward with a new blog system (among other things), and I will no longer be a consistent author here, although I will continue to do guest posts from time to time. However, I wanted to give you all one last blog post. Today's topic? An in-depth analysis of picks and bans in the first half of the 2014 spring split of LCS.

 

If you've watched high-Elo or professional LoL, you've noticed that very few people build Bloodthirster on melee champions. However, Ravenous Hydra has seen a decent amount of play. Today, I'll be looking at the differences between Ravenous Hydra and Bloodthirster to explain why that is!

Time to dive into some analysis of the first Preseason 4 game in the North American Challenger Series. Of course, you may say ‘the meta is barely established, why watch these games? And to you, I say ‘because’. Who doesn’t love a challenge?

League of Legends has put eSports on the map in a big way; will Riot continue to push eSports into the forefront of American culture? With Season 3 officially over, let's take a look back (especially compared with Season 2), to see Riot's triumphs and pitfalls in promoting and improving League of Legends. Riot is working hard at continuing to define the industry, and I have no doubt that the announced changes for Season 4 will continue to allow the game to evolve in a positive direction.

Boy do I have the best timing! I released a megapost on Season 3 masteries, and the Season 4 masteries get dumped on us hours later! So this time, to get ahead of the game, here are my thoughts on the Season 4 masteries, as well as 5 pages you can run on your favorite junglers!

Gentleman Gustaf here once again to talk about the jungle! After my last post, I got a lot of questions about how I jungle, so I've decided to do a 3-part post over the coming week, detailing all of the mastery pages, rune pages, and item sets you could run in the jungle, and why! Finally, after these posts, I'll be discussing my thoughts on the new Season 4 changes, focusing on the jungle changes, but paying some attention to the support changes as well. Today, we'll be starting with Masteries! So sit down and buckle up, because it's time for a wild ride through math, theory, and the perils of the jungle!

Hi, I'm Gentleman Gustaf, and I'm here today to talk about climbing the ladder as a jungler. A lot of the inspiration for this post comes from Meteos' jungle style, but the spirit of the post is about how to develop your own jungle style. Why is that important? Because unlike in lane, there is no real 'default' action. In lane, you can always say 'I guess I have nothing to do but farm', whereas that decision isn't as clear-cut in the jungle. Having a rubric for what to do will save you indecision.

In their final game vs Lemondogs, OMG pulled out a comp that could only be called EXTREMELY UNORTHODOX. Massive spoilers follow the jump, so follow at your caution.

With the Summer Split over, and World's on the horizon, I've been thinking a lot about what the most recent season means for League of Legends, and I'm left with a few thoughts on the game. Mostly, I want to talk about who I think really pulled weight this season. So what's my Allstar team look like?

Just in case anybody's forgotten, this is what we're talking about today

Trinity Force was arguably the defining item of Season 2. Between lifesteal and the strength of Trinity Force, bruisers were able to edge AP Carries out of top, and a whole class of champions (Trinity-tanks) arose. These champions could be built with Trinity Force and nothing but defensive items, due to the strong base damage of Trinity Force, plus the Movement Speed and the Slow. But all good things must come to an end, and Trinity Force slowly trickled out of favor. Why did Trinity Force stop being a must-buy, why did every champion who relied on Trinity Force either stop buying it or fall out of favor, and why is it set to make a comeback with the rework?

If you follow my posts regularly, you'll know I stress, well, consistency. It's not enough to play a strategy that will win, but also to know why it wins, and how it gets countered, so that you can mitigate that counter when it arises. About 2 or 3 months ago, I started an experiment to test just how well people could counter strategies at a higher level. I played almost nothing but jungle Skarner. Why? Because I knew he was an underplayed champion who is 'easily countered', and I wanted to see at which point those counters would come into play. What did I find out? Well, I was quite shocked, to say the least.

Which sounds more fun?

1. Solo Queue
   • You might not get a role you're good at or like
   • You might get raged at
   • You might get trolled
   • New strategies will be seen as trolling
2. Arranged 5s
   • Everybody probably has a fixed role; no role of chance
   • If somebody consistently rages, you don't play with them
   • If somebody is bad or trolls, you don't play with them
   • You can experiment with everybody onboard

But how do you get a good, organized 5s team?