League Of Legends

Well, Draven in most team comps does kind of suck since he has no escapes really, but when you pair him with a kayle who can turn him invulnerable his damage is just insane, especially if he's still catching axes through out the team fight. Scarra also said recently if Kayle ever goes unbanned they will first pick her 100% of the time just because of how great she works with the whole bruiser dive meta.

Ya that was quite amusing. That is where DL and I will disagree about the ADCs as personally me and a friend duo q and my friend only plays draven/varus and we destroy with it. In contrast if we switch it up and I were to ADC I love me some ez/corki. Also what I find interesting is if Draven is "trash" then I would hate to see him in a "non-trash state" after that raping qtpie gave out with Draven.

TJT_sl said:

Would any of you be interested in getting a casual 5-team going? I usually Mid, but I'm also decent at Jungle and Support.

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I play with LadyVex. We try not to rage too hard (never works). I'm level 27 right now and really would love getting more practice in.

Summoner Name: Koggok

If we are talking about playing the game properly, as in the adc can actually farm in lane and their team allows them to farm in between objectives, then I really don't see a huge issue with adc's for the most part. My usual build when I go adc (which isn't really my best role) is BT -- Atkspd item -- giants belt -- inf edge -- mogs. The mogs may be built before the inf edge depending on how the game is going and if I'm against a dive comp or not. Gives you plenty of damage and survivability. Easily completable by about the 35 min mark (earlier with some kills) if you keep your cs up and your team is on top of objectives. Glass cannon just isn't viable anymore beyond total stomps.

The problem you have as an adc is either like DL you are playing in a highly competitive and organized atmosphere where a team gets the advantage and never allows the adc to farm up (plus he's on a weak pro team so he is always getting beat on), or conversely you play in low tier games and the adc team themselves keep rushing from bad fight to bad fight or taking the adc's farm.

Well had a bad weekend last weekend. Dropped from quals to silver 2 to Silver 4. I have been having great luck with akali top, it just seems as though my team ( solo que ) doesn't get behind the akali top pick. I have straight carried games as akali 12 - 20 / 3 - 5 / 10 or so.

I read earlier about some guys having luck with ap yi. I always thought he wasn't that great, but I could have just built wrong / runed wrong. So for any of you fine gents playing and having success with ap yi, care to share?

Yea people kept hating on Draven and Twitch but they've both shown to be competitive in the LCS games. Ashe and Trist have had the fewest (or none? haven't seen all the matches) showings. Ez is always going to top tier unless they nerf his q/e hard. Corki seems to have fallen off in season 3 for more auto-attacky champs like Cait for some reason.

I can understand where DL is coming from, it's VERY hard to keep bruisers off your ADC right now, and ADC have probably the worst itemization in the game on top of that. APC have a lot more options, bruisers have tons of options, etc. If an ADC wants defense, at all, their options are basically Warmogs or QSS. Veil is bad atm, Hexdrinker is ok but Maw is a pretty expensive, inefficient upgrade for ADC, and probably the worst thing is ADC have no Armor items to build.

The thing is, in professional games, you're just going to see teams counter ADC-less teams with delaying teams so they get their ADC to endgame and just annihilate through the enemy team with the other 4 just acting as enablers. Every comp has some chance of getting victories (smite heimer 4-man mid won, after all) but the ADC is going to continue to exist indefinitely, especially with Riot probably reworking items more.

The trouble with adc armor items is that they would also be available to bruiser types. Unless they add some wierd on attack buff for physical ranged attacks sort of like the tiamat item.

Without something like that though that same ad / armor item can be used by the bruiser and the adc isn't any better off for it.

They could easily do that, but whether it would be well done or mean anything is another story. Runaan's and Hydra were both supposed to help niche champs and both failed, so there's still some item reworking to do (Zephyr needs a tweak too, as much as I love it).

Mythas_sl said:

Well had a bad weekend last weekend. Dropped from quals to silver 2 to Silver 4. I have been having great luck with akali top, it just seems as though my team ( solo que ) doesn't get behind the akali top pick. I have straight carried games as akali 12 - 20 / 3 - 5 / 10 or so.

I read earlier about some guys having luck with ap yi. I always thought he wasn't that great, but I could have just built wrong / runed wrong. So for any of you fine gents playing and having success with ap yi, care to share?

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I've seen a good variety in successful AP yi builds. A fun one is liandry's, RoA (or Rylai's), hourglass, D-cap. Nice health, nice damage potential, and the burn from liandry's is procced on to all of his alphas strike targets. Some people go for an early athene's and skip the liandry's for lane sustain.

Regardless of your build, the key to playing AP yi is timing. You don't want to show or Alpha strike in team fights until someone on the enemy team is in kill range for alpha strike. Then you ult, alpha, and chain alpha's off the first kill. Just tears through the enemy team. A little tricky to get the timing down because Yi is the opposite of most AP mids who damage to weaken the enemy team. Yi requires the opposite mindset.

Friend of mine that plays AP yi, will always get an athene's, sometimes just the chalice early. I believe he starts off with a doran's ring (the reworked passive on this gives yi a lot of sustain, hardly has any mana problems) and quite often will alpha strike the first wave quickly, pushing it to tower and making the opponent (who is most likely leashing jungle) miss a lot of cs as it's under turret rapidly. The downside to this is no early ward, but playing smart and knowing your jungler opponent you can avoid a lot of ganks simply by understanding timing. And the Athene's passive is ridiculous with him too, 12% mana back on a kill/assist, and the resets to his Q = no mana issues in a team fight. Also I would suggest running teleport and getting the distortion boots. You're able to counter gank bot/top when a fight is going on often, distortion lowers the cooldown significantly which is important. Also allows you to split push/back door very successfully.

Build path either Doran's Ring / faerie charmx2 + ward -> first back chalice + ward/boots, then you can kind of diverge from there. Also I highly recommend CDR, besides athene's getting a DFG (now does 15% of targets max health, not current, can be used as an execute for a forced reset), zhonya's (rush seeker's early against a bruiser mid). With max CDR yi's alpha is like 6.6? second cooldown or something retarded, and this way even if you don't get a kill while ult'ing, an assist alone will reset your alpha instantly. It's OP as hell

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

If we are talking about playing the game properly, as in the adc can actually farm in lane and their team allows them to farm in between objectives, then I really don't see a huge issue with adc's for the most part. My usual build when I go adc (which isn't really my best role) is BT -- Atkspd item -- giants belt -- inf edge -- mogs. The mogs may be built before the inf edge depending on how the game is going and if I'm against a dive comp or not. Gives you plenty of damage and survivability. Easily completable by about the 35 min mark (earlier with some kills) if you keep your cs up and your team is on top of objectives. Glass cannon just isn't viable anymore beyond total stomps.

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I swear if you go that long without either BC or LW how do you even do any damage? It just seems at that point everybody will either have a sunfire, randuins, locket or zhoynas which means if you don't have an Armor Pen item you don't do much dmg it feels. Lately it feels I have to go BT > Zeal > LW then into a defensive item on most of my ADCs, having to stall out finishing the PD just because everybody is finishing all their armor items at that point.

Drtyrm_sl said:

I play with LadyVex. We try not to rage too hard (never works). I'm level 27 right now and really would love getting more practice in.

Summoner Name: Koggok

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Yea, we usually try to do a top/jungle or a mid/jungle comp and work on comms, so we can coordinate ganks. A good bit of the time it works extremely well - I don't know how *good* I am with Elise but I seem to do fairly well. Late game I initiate and tank turrets, and my Udyr tends to be similar when I jungle with him.

I don't know if I've just gotten so used to the bruiser mentality where my strengths are closers and survivability, or if I just haven't played a squishier type in so long that I'm not as adept at using their escapes or watching for other initiates.

It probably doesn't help we're not playing ranked yet so our team comps are sucking - we never lock in till we're sure the team has an actual plan, but christ the other day the guy who said he was going mid waited till the last second, after we had locked in and then decided to jungle Warwick. (Terribly.)

Knytestorme_sl said:

Yeah I just checked this weeks roster and noticed that, was about to ask about Caitlyn.

Am sure if I find it scratches my competitive itch that I'll drop some cash on a few characters but the free roster should let me get some decent experience first by the sounds of it

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Cait/Nunu OP

Sidian_sl said:

I swear if you go that long without either BC or LW how do you even do any damage? It just seems at that point everybody will either have a sunfire, randuins, locket or zhoynas which means if you don't have an Armor Pen item you don't do much dmg it feels. Lately it feels I have to go BT > Zeal > LW then into a defensive item on most of my ADCs, having to stall out finishing the PD just because everybody is finishing all their armor items at that point.

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Bruiser or jungler on your team should be building the BC item. You'll still get the benefit of it. LW is usually the fifth item I build. The reasoning behind the mogs and the reason you'll see the majority of the pro's building it 3rd/4th is the mid game/early late game becomes a matter of which adc can survive the dive from the enemy teams bruisers. If you built health and they didn't then you survive and mop up the fight while their adc is dead. I've seen it in action a lot lately, both being on the team with the glass cannon adc and the team with the mogs adc. Almost always its been the healthy ADC that survives the initial dive burst and then goes on to stomp the remaining enemies as the team fight concludes. Is it acceding to what a lot consider the distasteful health meta? Yah, but it works. Really the only time you can get away with a pure glass cannon build is if your team is built to peel or you have a kayle ult reserved for you on engage.

There's something to the health strategy a lot of people overlook though. At lower skill levels, it gives you a bigger margin of error for positioning. At the highest skill levels, such as pro teams/challenger tier, it dissuades the other team from focusing on your damage dealer too much, so over a longer engagement you end up doing more damage since you live longer. With pros, they dance back and forth between fighting/running away over and over.

In between those skill levels, it's not quite as effective. If someone gets caught just a little bit out of position, and your team doesn't have the upfront burst/coordination to punish them for it, they end up getting away. Pros don't need as much dmg, because all 5 of them will react almost immediately to the same thing, whereas amateurs in higher ELO (Gold+) might have only 1 or 2 of the team reacting at the same time to the same thing.

This is why glass cannon fed builds will carry games so hard. Due to the other team's lack of coordination, you end up having these mini 1v1 fights instead of a concentrated 4v1 on you. If you put out enough damage, you own one guy in 2-3 seconds before the other team member reacts to assist him, then repeat.

That said, I do tend to get warmogs early on quite a few champions due to it's efficiency. Especially on Katarina when I play top. Her AP scaling isn't that great, but her base dmg is and she really needs resets to do insane damage in a team fight anyways. If you go too glass cannon, she dies too easily and you don't get resets. One reset letting you do a whole other Q>E>W combo is worth more then a 2k AP item would do to your initial combo. If she lives long enough to Q>E>W out a couple times, along with your team's damage.. she should get a reset and snowball the rest of that team fight. Basically, the longer she lives, the more damage she does anyway. I should clarify that I always get either haunting guise or sorc boots before the warmogs is complete. All depends on the lane, sometimes I gotta go hextech first for sustain, but generally those 3 items are first ones built, in some order also depending on how game is going. If our jungler is a strong ganker and helping my lane, I'll rush the sorc boots and/or haunting guise first.

Scumbag Voyboy. I love watching that guy play and the fact that he cheesed AP tryn this match versus MRN made it even more fun to watch.

Wooooo, Zephyr represnt! Also, holy shit Reginald's Xerath wrecking coL.

You just knew AP Trynd was gonna make an appearance this week. Also loving the 4 min turrets going down left and right in just about every game, and the amount of champs in rotation is actually pretty impressive. Out of 110? champions in the gaming pool now only 35 haven't been played in the last 3 weeks. It's pretty cool that much variety actually happens at such high levels, highlights a lot of players being exceptional at some uncommon champs and are still viable just because of their skill.

Mythas_sl said:

The trouble with adc armor items is that they would also be available to bruiser types. Unless they add some wierd on attack buff for physical ranged attacks sort of like the tiamat item.

Without something like that though that same ad / armor item can be used by the bruiser and the adc isn't any better off for it.

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I think one of the big problems with the bruisers is that their base damage with no damage items is too high. They need to do another across the board pass of them lowering their base damage and upping their ratios a bit. That way you don't have a Xin with nearly no + dmg but a ton of tanky items leaping in and still running over your ADC.