League Of Legends

Sona's (and Janna's shown in pic above) win rate comes from their ability to not require as much coordination in lane, at least in solo/duo queue. They both just do their own thing alongside the ADC and it works out for the most part. In the pro scene you see Thresh, Sona, and Lulu in that order by far the most popular with some Taric/Alistar and rarely someone else. Win rates at pro level have Sona > Taric > Thresh > Alistar all with winning records in that order from 52-60%. Oddly enough for how often Lulu is picked she has one of the worst win rates of any champion at 37%. Just above Janna's 36%.

The Sona nerfs won't do much. They aren't changing the heal it's only a slight reduction in the armor and MR from her W's aura. The other small nerf is a reduction in power chord's damage. Her Q will still hit just as hard and her sustained poke in lane will still be OP. They're just lowering her burst by a small amount. It starts out 5 damage less at level 1 and scales downward until level 6 where it bottoms at 16 less damage. It stays 16 less until level 15 when it scales back up and at 18 actually ends up doing 4 more damage than before. Her Q power chord doubles those values so at most 32 damage off the power chord from levels 6-14 and that's before MR reduction also. They're also giving her some HP and armor to bring her in line with the other casters as she currently can fall over in lane if anything touches her (Thresh chain, Janna tornado, Leona sword, Taric stun, Blitz grab, etc.). Also they're fixing her W power chord to actually work. Apparently it has never worked. It would alter the numbers displayed but not actually affect the damage the debuffed enemy would do. So that's a pretty big buff in that regard as in many teamfights 20% damage off an ADC or APC for a few seconds will be worth more than the slight single target burst lost from power chord.

Summary: Basically, Sona is OP now, especially in solo/duo queue, and still will be OP after the change. They're nerfing her defensive aura and power chord damage slightly. They're buffing her HP and armor slightly. They're (effectively) adding a completely new debuff effect to her W power chord.

I think Sona can make huge impact plays besides her ult, they're just much harder to see because it's all power chord secondary effects. Especially now with the -dmg debuff working, landing that on an ADC in a teamfight is a huge way to follow up Crescendo. Sona is also the only support I really feel confident with so I'm biased though, I typically don't support Taric and Leona are HUGE problems for a lot of teams in solo/duo queue.

Just started playing Morde again in ranked. (Gold) and I wonder if people just forgot how to play against him. First game was against an Ahri and the enemy Hecarim only tried to gank mid once and it was when I was already level 7 or so, at that point I've got my spirit of the spectral wraith and was basically already up like 40 cs on Ahri. The lane was over at that point because once a morde gets rolling he's a farming machine.

Ended up playing him again, picking him into a Zyra mid. The enemy had an amumu that actually tried to gank multiple times but the Zyra just wasn't that great, I pushed her in early (also apparently mordes Q 1-shots her plants, didn't know this) and she was having such bad mana problems that I was never really worried because Amumu alone can't kill me.

Junglers not camping mid. Letting me farm wraiths all the time. Push to enemy tower all the time. and just farm farm farm until you're basically up an item or two on everybody lol. I mean, check out this farm, I was pretty impressed with myself. Plus I was still in team fights quite a bit (7/0/8 and 5/2/5). Forgot how much I loved Morde.

edit:
Normal build is Rejuv Bead + 2 wards + 4 pots to start, go into SotSW > Negatron > Abyssal usually 100% of the time. Unless against an AD mid, then either Seekers or Haunting Guise instead of Negatron. His build has a ton of variety though. I know Liandries + Rylais' is really good on him. So is DFG. If you get max CDR on morde you're a monster that never dies because you always have fucking shields lol. Usually grab boots1 after SotSW and sorc shoes after your 2nd major item. (Abyssal or HG usually)

haha that is some really good farm not gonna lie!

Dat CLG video.

Pretty much Liquid Rising.

"We can be the best, we just keep losing." ... Alright, thanks for wasting 50 minutes of my time.

So my first three games going mid lane Vi have been successful: combined KDR 38/10/20. So far its been vs Anivia, Malzahar and LeBlanc and Malzahar was the only one I didn't just flat out shit on. He out pushed me and had way more cs, but I was 3 kills ahead of him by the time my tower died. My build so far has been starting wards and pots or flask and ward, rush a BT, then get trinity. Max E then Q for early harass and so I can clear a minion wave with only two E's. I generally just push the lane and do devestating ganks with my jungler and its hilariously effective with Vi's ult.

Anyone else have experience going mid with Vi? Who would I worry about for counters? I wouldn't think it would be the same as top lane counters since there are way more escape routes for Vi's Q, but I don't know.

I have been taking blue ezreal mid lately, it is kinda hilarious.

Tortfeasor_sl said:

So my first three games going mid lane Vi have been successful: combined KDR 38/10/20. So far its been vs Anivia, Malzahar and LeBlanc and Malzahar was the only one I didn't just flat out shit on. He out pushed me and had way more cs, but I was 3 kills ahead of him by the time my tower died. My build so far has been starting wards and pots or flask and ward, rush a BT, then get trinity. Max E then Q for early harass and so I can clear a minion wave with only two E's. I generally just push the lane and do devestating ganks with my jungler and its hilariously effective with Vi's ult.

Anyone else have experience going mid with Vi? Who would I worry about for counters? I wouldn't think it would be the same as top lane counters since there are way more escape routes for Vi's Q, but I don't know.

Click to expand...

Out of all of those, I assumed Malz would be the easiest match up...

We invaded their jungle at level 1 and Malz was level 2 when I finally got to lane. Our jungler had to recall and Malz knew it so he just pushed hard and got a decent early lead on me. I still won handily, but it wasn't a complete blowout like it was vs Anivia or LB.

I've been having fun with AD annie duoing with my friend planing nami

Annie's stun lasts long enough for nami to land her Q

Draegan_sl said:

Shit Other Games moves fast.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying maining a support and I've been messing around with Thresh with a perma ADC that I play with. I want to expand my repertoire to other supports and if I'm going to spend some dollars on a champ, I want to get some decent ones.

So, what is the current ranking for supports? I'm looking at Janna and Sona, but I understand Sona's heal is getting nerfed? Janna is all about shielding and CC? What about Nami (currently free so tried her real quick last night, but she's awful in solo queue as most supports are, but I'll try tonight)?

There's some random blog that tiers out champs in the current meta, but I have no idea if the site is legit. I also understand it really depends on who you're playing with and at what level, but I'm getting a general idea here. I don't care about difficulty or cost so I'm curious what people think.

Click to expand...

Right now it seems like lulu/sona/thresh/janna are the prefered supports I see most often. Even with sonas nerfs it is more to her aura buff than to the heal itself. With good mana she can still crank out a ton of healing over time. Hehe my biggest problem with sona is I wind up sniping kills from time to time accidentally. In a team fight when you are concentrating on keeping by your group once in a while I snap fire a power cord and melt somebody when I stop moving for a sec.

I've been playing Nami lately as support. Really enjoy her CC, even though she's not necessarily the strongest. She's a ton of fun against Draven, who seems to be extremely popular right now. Often you get those Dravens that are just so focused on catching axes, they'll try to catch every one. Well, Nami's little bubble is pretty easy to land when I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING.

Patch 3.8 imminent; Notes can be found here:http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-38-notes-0



Aatrox going to be live sometime later in the week, looking forward to playing around with him a bunch. Also the Kha'Zix nerf to his W not nearly as bad as I feared, originally on the PBE they were also nerfing his evolved R.. but they actually buffed it. And managed to buff his Q as well, definitely seems to lean towards being a more evolve depending upon opponents gameplay now rather than just always evolve W-> E right away type of stuff. And I'm happy with the Sona changes, they're basically buffing her early game. Minimal nerf to armor/mr aura, meanwhile fixing the -dmg power chord proc. Gaining that hp/armor back is huge, her lvl 1-3 were IMO really difficult to manage depending upon lane opponents.

The Kha'zix changes certainly didn't nerf him. If anything it'll buff him but it does help with the options it offers to make him more of a dynamic champion.

I'm a little curious how that jungle change is gonna play out, more XP from blue and red just means invades are that much more potent. Why didn't they just increase the spawn time on golems since that was really the problem jungle mob?

I do like the fix to Ashe's passive though. It's a pretty significant early game buff.

The Ancient_sl said:

I'm a little curious how that jungle change is gonna play out, more XP from blue and red just means invades are that much more potent. Why didn't they just increase the spawn time on golems since that was really the problem jungle mob?

I do like the fix to Ashe's passive though. It's a pretty significant early game buff.

Click to expand...

I don't think invades will be as bad just because unless the jungler gets caught in the invade he should be able to go to the enemies buff and take that. Enemy takes your blue, if you're blue side get bot lane to help you with enemy blue, you'll have the player advantage and therefore should be able to get the enemy blue. (Or get top lane + mid to help you take blue if you're purple side)

I think what will be interesting though is to see how strong the early game duelists become. (Shyvana, Shaco, Udyr, etc etc) because getting a fast level 2 on blue, then running to the enemy red could be a very strong opener, especially if you first blood the enemy jungler, take his buff, then go take yours. gg.

Sorry, I'm talking about "counter-jungling" where you invade the the enemies jungle and steal their buffs, not just early game send 5 people to their buff. Strong counter junglers will benefit from theses changes and junglers who clear slowly will be hurt by it.

The Ancient_sl said:

Sorry, I'm talking about "counter-jungling" where you invade the the enemies jungle and steal their buffs, not just early game send 5 people to their buff. Strong counter junglers will benefit from theses changes and junglers who clear slowly will be hurt by it.

Click to expand...

Oh whoops, yeah that's what I was thinking too. The early game strong duelists might be very strong after this patch, which is why I was thinking Shyvana might make a comeback or Udyr.

Junglers who clear slow have to gank to be meaningful anyway, this doesn't affect that a whole lot. They did say they're going to see how this works in the long run, PBE/internal testing is pretty crap at determining the effects of changes like these.