Reign of Gaming

                                                       

Today is a two-parter: Patch Review, and the return of Solo Queue Heroes!

Now that the patch has been out for a bit, let’s review what some of the effects have been. By category.

Changes that hardly matter

Annie

Summon: Tibbers

Tibbers’ Health increased to 1200/2100/3000 from 1200/1600/2000
Tibbers’ Magic Resist increased to 30/50/70 from 25/45/65
Mana cost reduced to 100 at all ranks from 125/175/225

This change is nice, but ultimately, Annie is built on blowing people up. If someone can’t do that, a longer-lasting Tibbers does not mean much difference. Fewer Tibber kills for gold, okay. Tibbers is about having an AOE stun. It’s easy to avoid him or ignore him because tanks aren’t afraid of his damage, they’re afraid of her burst. Annie makes fights shorter--either she or someone else ends up leaving the fights soon.

The mana change hardly means anything as she rarely has mana issues in lane, and in late game she holds on to her stun and has enough until the teamfight is over.

While Annie support isn’t considered viable, I’ve enjoyed using her and I do think this change matters a little more if you’re taking her down there.

Ashe

 Focus

Ashe now gains 3/4/5/6 Focus stacks every second while not attacking instead of gaining Critical Strike Chance

Ashe will critically strike on her next basic attack when she reaches 100 Focus stacks
Initial Focus stacks are equal to Ashe's Critical Strike Chance

Fun for shenanigans, you can now reset Ashe’s crit more often if you want. This change only matters if you’re going to go for a poke and siege comp, but she still has no escapes or disengages, which those teams and comps go for. In an all-out teamfight, it matters little.

It makes her a little stronger in lane, but she’s still going to be outclassed.

Changes that matters a lot

An item I’ve procrastinated writing about is Sword of the Divine, because it has an on and off button and it’s hard to compare it to anything else.

But it is a real item and it has received little attention. And someone I ended up queueing with said I should write about it, and people don’t often say “write about this” very often, so I thought, sure, yes, let’s see what we can do about it.

Here are the questions I usually think of when I evaluate an item, and they aren’t ones that can be evaluated fully in a single article.

• What situations are this item good for?
• When should this item be purchased in a build order?
• What items go with this item?
• How well does it compare to items similar to it?
• Who should build this item?

Considering all of these questions in a vacuum is difficult, because the answers to many of them depend on the answer to other questions.

Sword of the Divine is not easily quantified, just as Ravenous Hydra is harder to quantify, because passive effects are not easily quantified. Assumptions have to be made, and you have to present a package of factors to help people make a decision.

Ever have a game where your team had more kills, dragons, and minions killed and yet, after the laning phase was over, you struggled to push and had fewer turrets?

There’s a reason that can happen, and it’s because the other team had better map and lane management. I’m going to teach you about a skill that’s important, overlooked, and is assumed knowledge by experienced players that usually win their games.

There are three stages to the game: early-game / lane phase, mid-game, and late game. I'll start with early game and when and why not to yell at your jungler for killing all the minions in your lane.

Early Game

The first thing you need to realize is that at any given time, a lane is going one direction or the other. The only exception to this is when the lanes have reset. A lane reset occurs when all minions in lane from both teams have died, and the next wave to meet each other will be equal. Lane resets are most relevant at the early stage of the game.

This term is also used to denote the clearing of just one side to make the lane favorable to you. "OH NO! A JUNGLER HAS JUST CLEARED ALL THE MINIONS IN MY LANE! WHAT A JERK!" Not so fast. This is the other definition of resetting a lane--it is rearranging the lane to your own circumstances.

So, let’s say you are at top and your jungler kills your lane opponent. You only have 250 health so you leave. There are four minions from the other team and eight in yours. The jungler kills these four minions and perhaps the six after that. You might be mad that you lost 10 cs, but you’re not understanding the situation correctly. The reason for this is to deny your lane opponent the experience and cs, and to make it be on your side. The turret will kill all fourteen of your own minions, and when he gets back to lane you will have ten minions (we’ll say two died to your fourteen at the turret) to kill and he will have six, and the minions will be closer to your turret.

If he had not done so, you’d get back to lane and your opponent would get about a dozen minions to kill and you’d have six, and the lane would be at his turret. You want to keep the minions at your turret unless you know you want to push.

 

Ravenous Hydra, Bloodthirster, and "Win More" Options

A couple of times I’ve had people ask me about Ravenous Hydra. Why does no one build it? Why is it considered bad? Why do your teammates always groan if you’re building it on anyone that isn’t Gangplank (a champion that isn’t high-tier anyway)?

The first basic reason is that Tiamat costs 100 more gold than Bloodthirster. Let’s take a look. For Bloodthirster, which costs 100 less gold, it just needs just 5 stacks to equal Hydra in damage. A fully stacked Bloodthirster has 25 more damage and 6% more lifesteal, for 100 less gold. In late game teamfights, where it counts, you are dealing with more damage and more lifesteal.

Furthermore, bruisers and melees generally do not have the space for so much money for a damage item. It is better to get an Iceborne Gauntlet, defensive items, or something with better utility like Manamune or Black Cleaver.

But let’s talk about it in terms of Blood Thirster, as that is the most clear opponent of a Ravenous Hydra.

I’d like to talk about a term from the world of Magic: The Gathering, which most of you have heard of. There’s a term used to disparage lots of cards that look cool and that are attractive to less experienced players but that are not actually competitive. Many weak cards that look like strong cards are called “win more” cards.

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.

 

 

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. 

                                                                 

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. 

 

 

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.

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.

 

What is your Role?

Different kinds of players can win the game. You simply need to capitalize on your personality and strengths and focus on those. Working on your weaknesses is important too, but once it’s official and something’s on the line, even if it’s simply LP, it’s time to play what you are good at and what you are good with.

So, what kinds of ways do you win? What kind of player are you?

The steamroller

This is the first kind of playstyle that most players usually think of when they think “how do I win the game”? They think of killing someone a lot, then (if they’re thinking correctly) to spread the love all over the map until the other team surrenders or they just fail to be able to defend against a fed champion. This sometimes works, and especially can work if you can exploit a matchup, roaming champion, overpowered champion, or roaming and overpowered champion.

Best roles: not surprisingly, the best roles for this are Top, Mid, and Carry, which is why they’re the most popular roles. They get the most kills.

Pro level games are very educational, and if you haven’t watched any I’d encourage you to just to see how effective playing works. Even better, the LCS is on regularly, so you can see strategies and ideas evolve. Even if you only catch one game, as long as it’s not one of the few where a team tries something radically different (fewer than 10%, I’d say), you’ll get a gist for how to play.

While it’s very useful, I’d like to caution you against using LCS play to badger other players or to make it the only guide to how you play.

First off, you are not in the LCS, and you never will be. Second off, casual play and solo queue have different rules and situations—you are not communicating or playing as tightly, nor picking and playing off of hours and hours of strategizing and analysis.

So, if you’re an arranged team at high-level play, fine. Watch the videos intensely.

For the rest of us, I’d like to suggest which things you should and shouldn’t take.

Things to take from LCS

How to teamfight: my last three articles had some advice on how to do teamfights. You can see a lot of those principles in action from watching LCS games, especially teams that do teamfights well. I recommend watching Gambit.

Item legitimacy: every season the teams figure out what the best items are. Locket on Jungler, Spirit Stone, Blade of the Ruined King, Bulwark. Some items are never purchased.

Items are pretty simple—there are always items, sometimes items, and never items. After a few games, you’ll know what those items are.  

Combos: one of the great things about watching a lot of teams that take hours every week experimenting and thinking of champion compositions is that you get to see how those combos shake out. Ziggs and Jarv ults? Cool! The old Shyvana/Orianna combo from last season? Indeed.

I don’t literally mean AOE move combos, I also mean how well champions work with other champions on their team. We have learned much of Thresh recently, for instance.

Things to take with Caution

Champion picks: there is a reason that Elementz did two different lists, one for pro and arranged play and one for solo queue and casual play. The frames of playing are very different.

There are some champions that are great in solo queue that aren’t great in arranged play, and vice-versa. Some champions require much more teamwork to play with and against.

If you disagree with this, think of one issue: don’t you hate it when someone sees a champion being played in LCS and then thinks “oh that champion wins easily” and then doesn’t know how to play or what to do with that champion? Or, perhaps worse, when someone says “no one plays that champion at LCS” even though you are very good with that champion and have a high win rate with him?

Don’t be that guy.

Item builds: this doesn't apply as strongly as above, but how to build a champion isn’t something you should rip straight off from LCS.

First, you should understand why people are building champ the way they build them. If you are playing as Zed, yeah, Blade of the Ruined King is a great item on him. He needs to kill everyone and he’ll need that item vs. tanks.

But guess what! Maybe in your game no one is tanking, or no one is stacking that much health, or you get fed really hard. In an LCS game, a Zed knows he’s gonna have fatties to deal with. In your game, you may not. It may be better just to get a Bloodthirster or Last Whisper first.

I saw a Zed rush Blade of the Ruined King really hard when he was losing to a Shen and a bunch of squishies. He should have chilled out and stopped after he got Cutlass, but he just rushed it. Well, he didn’t start doing any better.

Another thing to consider in casual play is that teams often don’t know how to teamfight. If you are a jungler or a top, you should consider getting a damage item and not going straight tank so that you can clean up and destroy the whole team. A Lizard Elder, Triforce, Black Cleaver, Rod of Ages, Rylai’s, Liandry’s…something that will help you get turrets and enemy champions down. Conversely, you may need to prioritize defense when playing as mid carry.

“Counters”: which champions counter which is something people have a hard time understanding. First, certain sites built on crowd wisdom have people thinking incorrect things and making shallow, single-point arguments about which champion to pick vs. which.

Furthermore, when teams in the LCS play, they try to pick both to complement their own team while countering the entire team. When you pick a champion, you want to pick someone that fits both of those purposes, and while the LCS is good for showing some team compositions and ideas, it does not explain how a lane matchup works.  An LCS lane matchup can be built on stalling, map pressure, or under the assumption that the jungler will gank (or not, if it’s built on easy stalling and stalemating.) These factors just won’t matter as much, and chances are your team won't even realize what they are.

Best,

Old Man Eyebrows 

This week's eyebrows:

 

Did you enjoy today's article?  Check out my past blogs here!

Follow me on Twitter @OldManEyebrows! Please send me eyebrows you find!

Old Man Eyebrows here, back with some more fundamentals on team organization, or stuff that every player ought to know.

There’s laning, which has been covered in many ways, and then teamfighting, and then there’s the everything in between.

The everything in between part is hard for a lot of players to understand, especially when so many other players do not. What you need to do is herd them. This is a bit easier if you’re playing support or jungle. This article isn’t about how to get your team to not be retards, though, but rather how not to be retarded yourself.

There comes a point in most lw and average players’ games where someone in the game doesn’t know what the hell they should be doing. At this point, they go into “passive farm mode”, where they wander around the map farming. Jungle camps are especially popular as they are much safer, and people want to farm without being yelled at by their teammates.

The irony is they could just ward, as a single minion wave pays that off. What’s worse is that any player that goes into this mode must be forcibly reminded that there’s a game to win, and your team must be prepared to win teamfights and take turrets to win. So, you go, and no one comes, and then you think “fine, I’ll farm too then.” No no no.

Sometimes, though, there are teams that are always doing stuff together, and it matters more than any other factor in the game at all besides how well they get along. The team that is doing stuff together almost always beats the team where everyone is doing his own thing, without coordination.

The point of the game is to take objectives. It is not to get kills. Getting kills is often a requirement for taking objectives, but not always. It will always be a requirement of the game, but how many, who, and where are all optional. Taking objectives is always required to win the game, and the nature of it doesn’t change.

Recap

I ended the last article with the following:

“Positioning follows two important principles.

• AD Carries and some champions almost always follow the same rule of positioning.

• For all other roles and for other champions, it depends.

All AD carries follow similar principles. Other roles, it depends on the champion. Some champions almost always do the same thing. Some champions have options depending on build or can and must adapt to who the other nine players picked.”

Now I’m going to use the terminology from the last article and then apply it to roles and basic champion types. While I can’t review every single champion, these guidelines should cover most of them.

 “FOCUS THE AD CARRY.”

If I see that in caps or if I see it a second or third time by the same person on my team, I mute that person. They do not know how to teamfight, and what’s more if you try to explain it to them they just get mad.

For all of you who know that it’s not the AD carry’s job to “focus the other AD carry” and that teamfights don’t really work like that, this one’s for you. If anyone you know doesn’t get what they’re supposed to do in a teamfight, refer them to this article and it’s second part.

What teams are supposed to do in a teamfight

If a team is organized and people know what they are doing, what they end up doing is pretty consistent. Even if there are errors or variations in team comps, the rules of engagement are defined. Of course, every team comp or strategy, every 5v5 will vary slightly, and for some champions even there will be different rules. An example is Kha’Zix. Kha’Zix has a Manamune build that is very pokey, where he focuses on W spam. This is usually for top Kha’Zix. Mid Kha’Zix can go Manamune too, but can also go Last Whisper / Blood Thirster and other damage items without having to get Tear, just focusing on going all-in and eliminating one or two of the enemy team quickly.

So realize that positioning can vary depending on build and role. If you went Locket and Warmog’s first on Xin Zhao, you should probably be initiating. If you went glass cannon (and I don’t know why you would), you’ll need to be more careful about your timing.

We have all had games where we suddenly run into someone on the other team that we haven’t encountered in 10-15 minutes, and we get slaughtered, and we think “good gravy that guy is fed”, and likely complain about it or so say in chat, and possibly even get angry towards our teammates and the design of a champion.

Akali is one of these champions. You think, if she goes in, I’ll stun and get out, it’s fine. But perhaps you didn’t pay attention or notice she’s got 200 AP already. Dashslashdashslash, double kill, triple kill, again.

Even bad players can rack up kills with Akali. You’ve got to be prepared.

Where you'll see him/her: in a solo lane, usually mid. Flavors are “you picked a champion that Akali stomps” and “I always play Akali when I can so I can get kills because that’s how you win” (more on this gem later). Oh, is that every pick? It seems so much more clear with her…is it just me or does she seem to get instalocked more quickly than other champions?

Worst Case Scenario: as stated earlier, instantly wrecking one to three people on your team. Akalis that get even moderately fed can do this without much effort, then even if they die it doesn’t matter, because they took out the most important target. Even if it’s one for one it can be okay if the player is more important or valuable than the Akali player is.

Annoyance rating: 8

Solo Queue Rating: 7

High-Level rating: 4

Things that are generally good vs. this champion: oracles, pink wards, Randuin’s Omen, Locket of the Iron Solari, Hexdrinker, Aegis of the Legion/Runic Bulwark, Health, shields, death-fire grasp, exhaust, vision-granting abilities, hard cc, gap-closers and blink effects, high mobility, silencing, AOE and non-direct-targeting effects.