Reign of Gaming

Think you need to re-define 'abusive innovation' to what it really is, exploitation. Every gamer worth his salt that's played strategy games of any sort will know that winning is always about who can find the strongest builds and exploit them the best. Whether this is being the first to work out the fastest way of doing a certain dungeon to farm immense amounts of rare drops to sell or discovery a specific skill or item build that is 'broken' in PvP. LoL is no different in this respect and honestly, Riot wouldn't be able to find all these balance issues on their own. We actually need people looking for exploits to expose them so this game can continue to become more and more balanced.

It remains useful for securing kills and preventing deaths. In combination with items like Twin Shadow's and Eleisa's Miracle, it allows a support to safely ward the entire map even if they get no assistance from their team (aka. Solo Queue), without face checking and throwing a game. So, yes, it is still useful, but unfortunately it's not as useful as Exhaust most of the time, particularly if you have any kind of ''team work''. That Exhaust is also likely to be the only one on your team so you had better be ready to drop it on the Zed that comes to kill your carry and would feel rather silly having CV instead in what is a very common scenario these days.

Quote from B4hell »

Your concept is the WORST IDEA for sion VU i've read on this forum!

......

You just completely neglect his AD carry build and changing his ult completely is a mistake ! Just give it some usefull stats for ap casters

Missing a trick here I think. You don't seem to realise why Sion in his current state is so difficult to balance, whereas Hashinshin actually does. Sure AD Sion is fun, but it's not viable (worst early game ever) in competitive or even semi-serious play. It is also completely broken in late game. I'd rather have Sion changed so he can at least be played competitively again than retain the 'viability' of multiple builds for him. The latter is fun, but it can make balancing a serious issue and holds back champions like Sion from being played competitively.

Good post Hashinshin.

Several things I really liked. 1) Exploding rotten zombie skin, literally blowing the flesh off his bones and damaging his enemies with it, that is just too awesome for Riot not to do (imagine if visually it actually swelled and then burst, additionally if he was damaged while the 'shield' was up bit of flesh could fall off until the shield was broken and all of it had fallen off :D . The idea for his ulti change has to be some sort of necrophage idea too, like Sion can regain health from consuming various dead body parts on the Rift. That would be cool. 2) The King for a day analogy is really very good, that's precisely how I see things working currently and you are right, it would be really helpful if Riot just formalised it in the code already. It's really should be up to the higher priority picks as to whether they want to accommodate any lower picks requests or not.

I do have to point out some issues with grammar / sentence structure (or maybe copy paste errors), e.g. re-read your first couple of paragraphs carefully. My suggestion is that you get someone else to proof read your articles before posting them, I say this for one very important reason. If you have written something, often you just read what you think you wrote rather than what you actually wrote, this can cause all manner of grief when you are trying to review or edit something yourself.

Finally I'd just like to say congratulations on a consistent improvement in your articles lately, keep up the good work!

Quote from Emeraldw »

Quote from holiclol »

Quote from Emeraldw »

Don't get Iceborn Gauntlet on Ezreal unless your something like a Top Ezreal in a poke comp. 

Your basically saying to the other team "I do less damage than your AD carry because he invested in damage stats. Please ignore me and let the other AD rip my team apart."

except the utility gained is tremendous, and the damage you deal is still considerable. Most fights a fought while sieging  towers, which means that pokes are extremely valuable. Muramana adds a good deal to your poking potential

 

If your an AD carry, your not going for utility. 

'If you're an AD carry, you're not going for utility'. Well, Varus would like a word with you! But in all seriousness, yes, the main job of ADCs is high DPS, but if they can do that job AND bring other things to the table such as utility, safety or burst damage, without compromising their primary role, then why wouldn't they do it? I don't think the concept of 'Muramana Ezreal' really fits this bill, but BT/SS/IBG EZ certainly does and so do most of the more popular picks in any role frankly. If Muramana can fit into an Ezreal build or other ADCs in general (I don't think it will, I've tried it on several and the mid game lull is truly appalling) it is more likely that it will be into a slightly out of the meta build (e.g. BT/SS/IBG or RH/LW/BotRK/IE) than a direct swap for an established item in current meta (e.g. replacing IE or BT etc). I just encourage people to keep in mind while they are experimenting whether what they are doing is actually the best decision they could make at each stage. If the answer is no, the experiment is probably over! It's good to try new things, but it's also critical not to let the excitement gained from doing so get the better of your judgement.

Quote from Emeraldw »

Quote from sgtcolon »

Quote from Emeraldw »

Don't get Iceborn Gauntlet on Ezreal unless your something like a Top Ezreal in a poke comp. 

Your basically saying to the other team "I do less damage than your AD carry because he invested in damage stats. Please ignore me and let the other AD rip my team apart."

I think you are missing out a bit on what this build is about. Just try ignoring Ezreal when he gets BT/SS/IBG, your whole team take a tonne of poke damage and are perma-slowed. I agree that late game your statement is true, but it really isn't for mid-game.

How is it not true for mid game?  And is 4 items really mid-game?

If you have that build and I the same but LW, I will be doing way more damage as any AD carry.  When the team fights happen, I will hurt more and my tanks will have armor to absorb what you are throwing out.  Ez poke is not that scary.  Sure it slows, but do I really care about kiting your team?  If so, that is a poke comp build.  You don't want to fight anyway.  

But in solo que, if you team fight, I WILL out damage you by a large margin.   

There is a couple of things here, firstly, this build is about more than just poking. It is about being very strong in lane too, which a good Ezreal can convert into a significant lead on his counterpart. So, we're unlikely to be comparing like for like gold costs at this point. We're more likely talking about Ezreal being close to an item up on his opponent.

Also, I think 3 major items is pretty much right in the middle of mid game, so to speak. At least for my definitions, but to be honest this is a phrase often used, but rarely defined. Early for me is mainly while laning is still prioritised and normally amounts till soon after the first major item purchase, but in slower paced games (this mostly depends on the junglers) it can get as far as 2 major items. Mid game I feel is anything from 2-4 items, but it's also well before level 18 when death timers are still relatively short, and again depends on the overall pace of the game (i.e. some players may be approaching their mid game while you are still in your early game etc.) Late game for me is in the 5+ (note I am assuming boots for all stages, so 6 equates to selling boots for a PD etc) major item stage, when death timers are significant and effectively the next team fight could determine the out come of the game.

Most games do not get to the late game stages and if you are playing Ezreal you really do not want it to, but especially true if you have decided to go for more of a utility build (that said you could always sell stuff and go a full carry build). However, if Ezreal is hitting his mid game stride while much of your team is still in their early game phase AND he is running BT/SS/IBG you are in for a really rough mid game in general. This is what I was trying to explain. Why this is annoying is that Ezreal is pretty much the only ADC that can actually run this kind of build successfully and really there are few viable counters. You can plan on being able to hang in there and out scale him with a hyper carry, or crush every other lane and hope bot lane doesn't feed too hard, so you can actually ignore Ezreal in team fights by virtue of being equal or ahead in items and durability, or camp the living shit out of Ezreal, but be aware that against a good Ezreal this can simply be an exercise in futility. None of these are very good options for solo queue and dealing with Ezreal typically requires a lot of coordination and good decision making.

Anyway, I've digressed extensively! There is a reason stuff like this is successful, where theoretically it seems much weaker than other alternatives, and the context is often critical to understanding why.

Quote from Emeraldw »

Don't get Iceborn Gauntlet on Ezreal unless your something like a Top Ezreal in a poke comp. 

Your basically saying to the other team "I do less damage than your AD carry because he invested in damage stats. Please ignore me and let the other AD rip my team apart."

I think you are missing out a bit on what this build is about. Just try ignoring Ezreal when he gets BT/SS/IBG, your whole team take a tonne of poke damage and are perma-slowed. I agree that late game your statement is true, but it really isn't for mid-game.

You might think that is true, but almost every single game has a duo queue on both teams. Don't believe? Use lolnexus.com and check for yourself. Whether that means there are only 6 'true' men per game or not I don't know :P But I do know that duo queuing is pretty OP if you find the right person and so does Riot.

Ahh a new mentor to get my teeth into ^^ ;)

This sounds like a great watch, I shall try and tune in!

Just keep your eyes on this channel.

Matt gave the lecture today on escaping Silver League and he plays ADC so it's likely to be a bit biased toward that role anyway. Wk 4 will be uploaded shortly.

The previous 3 lectures would also help him out a lot I am sure. For example...

and...

and finally... (careful of the sound on this one, this was the first time and there were some technical issues ^^)