League Of Legends

I typically just laugh at shaco with ignite. Drop a couple wards. You see him come in, team collapses and he dies. Him and his ignite are useless for the next ten minutes unless your team makes some serious bad laning decisions. Also using Insec or some of the best junglers in NA as an example of a champ not being dumpster tier is kind of false advertising. Diamond is making Karma jungle a thing in the EU LCS, haha. You're average skilled player won't get the same results.

Now of course none of this is true if you're playing in low mmr or normals. Then he's a fun as hell pub stompy master of pissing people off.

edit because I'm sounding like a jerk:

Any advice I give in this thread is based on whats the most optimal as far as I understand the game and what I see being effective in high mmr/pro leagues. I'm not giving advice or recommendations on a champion's fun factor or niche value, which Shaco does have in spades.

Shaco is nerfed in to the dirt. Stay away until (if) they undo any of it.

That blog about SC2 Bronze is relevent to me but I suppose if you didn't read it through maybe some key points wouldn't have jumped out. Note: this is specifically in reference to my 5-7 bronze friends that all wholeheartedly believe they are better than they are.

A) When "something bad" happens in a game, for example, unwarded top and our hypothetical bronze top player face-checks tribush and dies to the waiting jungler. Bronze players TYPICALLY think to themselves "Whelp, found him..." and do the same thing in their future games while better players will actually learn something from the mistake.

The "study" this guy did wasn't on "are bronze players bad", he was trying to figure out WHY they were bad... and an avoidance of learning absolutely jives with my own trials and tribulations trying to (tactfully) teach my friends how to play. They hit their plateaus over a year ago and persist in the same stupid mistakes that they were making when they were fresh level 30s. But....

B) Their own self-assessment is flawed; they don't need to work on anything because they're already "pretty good"... except [insert reason here] happens and thats why they died in the enemy jungle or that's why the game was a loss. There are so many reasons that they aren't higher ranked and none of them have anything to do with their own play, because their own play is fine.

Case in point: Wizardhawk was simultaneously upset enough about his low ranking to complain to us while running ghost/clarity with god-awful rune pages. I'm not trying to pick on him, but I would wager the majority of people who placed Bronze and climbed their way out in 50-100 games hit up any number of resources online and set their shit up properly before diving deep into ranked play. Typically, bronze-4-life players don't do this because they aren't self-assessing and they're "pretty good" except for their shitty team-mates.

The final point this guy made that stood out to me was how the LoL version of "micro/macro better" is "ward more" and it isn't helpful because it's almost essentially the same as saying "play better". Bronze players don't buy wards and even if they did, they don't utilize them because they are stumbling over the logical steps involved in warding.

A) Buy ward.
B) Place ward strategically to...
C) Gain knowledge of enemy movements to...
D) Defend oneself and ones allies from unexpected attacks and...
E) Capitalize on enemy movements to...
F) Pick up momentum in the match via champion kills, dodging failed ganks, objective taking.

Without understanding this logic it isn't any surprise that my Bronze friends almost NEVER ward and even if they do they aren't checking their minimap. Warding/minimap awareness isn't the priority. They have no plan, they're in the lane just existing -- maybe they'll get a kill or maybe "OP as fuck J4 will gank again because hes camping the lane".

I was going to decay tomorrow so I played a ranked game today. Our forth pick calls ADC and it goes first pick Thresh, Trist, Fiddle (me), and Twitch with Lee Sin last pick top. Twitch ends up middle vs Orianna. I get not even a single auto attack for blue buff. Most of my team is plat 3 or plat 4.

But it's alright because Teemo starts Doran's Ring + 2 health potions, I kill him, pink his lane, kill him again, kill him again, pink his lane again, kill him again (two of which were really obvious tower baits by a mangled Lee Sin), and by then Lee Sin is more than powerful enough to shit all over the entire game. And he does. Teemo was also platinum with 500 ranked games this season.

Everyone who plays League of Legends is terrible.

Ronne_sl said:

Shaco is nerfed in to the dirt. Stay away until (if) they undo any of it.

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There is 0 chance of that. He's shit tier in pro play but annoying as fuck for everyone else to play against, on par with old Eve. A bunch of Reds have commented how they dislike his kit and I wouldn't be surprised if they hit him after Sion (Heimer is supposedly next, Sion after-ish). Although some dev or other seemed to make Yorick a personal project so that timeline is shifty as hell, as always.

Skarnar, Rengar, etc. are all in the 'tweak' remake category so I'm not counting those (kinda like the Shyv tweaks). Aside from Heim/Sion/Shaco I actually can't think of any champs screaming for a hard redo like they are. There are a lot in that 'tweak' zone though, I guess.

I picked up Shaco only because I was curious to try him out for shits and giggles. Played him in two quick games and I sucked bad obviously. 1st game was like my first jungle game ever where I didn't have much of an impact. I essentially just farmed because when I went to gank, I could never find the perfect opportunity. It didn't help that I didn't know my Q's range and stealth duration either. In the end I was super underfarmed and my late game was even weaker.

My second game was bad. Get Blue, counter red. Would of had it but my box didn't take aggro to the enemy red and I took too much damage. Then the enemy jungler was on me and bot lane came up to help. Dead. Couldn't recover. Ended the game like 0/5/0 but the real kicker was that the people on my team were screaming to report me like crazy. I mean, you had a Heimer mid that was getting shit on and a Kat support that was afk like the first 10 minutes of the game screaming at me.

It was pretty lulzy.

Though I have to say, I really love Zac. Played him top the next game and managed to carry the game with like 15/5/4 or something like that. First time I managed to do that in a 2v1 lane. I had a decent jungler on my side too.

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Re: Reworks
I picked up Heimer last week when he was on sale because I was curious about how he played, but I know they are planning on reworking him. Buying him might pay off. Same thing with Yorick. I'm kind of shelving them just in case.

Though I haven't heard much about the devs doing anything about Shaco.

Just saw the patch notes for today. I'm so tired of nerfs. They nerf every single patch and its getting ridiculous. Why don't they buff instead of nerf. One thing Morello doesn't get is trends. Mobas follow certain trends through high tier and professional play. Just because a champion is seeing a lot of play, doesn't necessarily mean he's better than 90% of the cast. However, when a champ sees less then 10% play, it generally means they are worse then 90% of the cast.

That's one thing I like about Dota is Icefrog knows how to balance way better than Morello. Granted, he's had a lot longer to do it, so I'll give him that. Pretty much, they need to come off the nerf bats so much and start buffing some of these useless champions (Heimer).

He's needed a revamp since his release but given how disliked he is there isn't any drive to go and do it. He's had four complete cycles of being hated, getting nerfed into the ground, being regarded as terrible, and rocketing right back to hated again. I don't think he's in good shape at all right now. I think he's bad versus other popular characters like Lee Sin, Udyr, Twisted Fate, and Shen. He still has a kit that is frustrating for people to play against and he could still climb back up if the meta moved around a little.

I used to like the original shaco way back before seasons etc. Red pot first blood mid gank ftw.

Penance_sl said:

Just saw the patch notes for today. I'm so tired of nerfs.

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League is definitely a game that nerfs based on popularity but this patch is really, really light. The Zac change is small and is aimed at making Elastic Slingshot less valuable when maxed, the Elise changes should finally have her in a non-frustrating place, Thresh is going to still be great but going all in at level 2 is going to result in his death a few more times than it would have before. The Ryze changes are all counterbalanced and he'll still be solid. No one got dumpstered. I've seen champions get dumpstered.

Yeah Ryze should still be ok. Looking forward to the extra movement on his ult but it's going to make laning vs the longer ranged mids a bigger pain in the ass than it already is.

All of Ryze's abilities now have the same range too which will make him slightly easier to play.

Yeah, I just noticed that and also regarded it as a strange sort of positive. Rune Prison being 20 mana cheaper at all levels is also nice.

And he's still the ranged AP that gets +murder out of building a Frozen Heart.

The question is can you bring yourself roll the dice 700 times? Should your rank be a reflection of who grinded the most games at a 51% win rate? Meh.

It's 55%, but what other solution do you have?

Want better? Make a 5 man team.

The Ancient_sl said:

It's 55%, but what other solution do you have?

Want better? Make a 5 man team.

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The core problem I have with League of Legends is that it does not do enough to facilitate and provide incentives for 5v5 organized play. I want people of all skill levels having reasons to make or join teams and right now all of the extra effort and organization required to do so is not rewarded.

Well mainly it's just that people don't like playing with others who aren't at very close to their skill level and having 5 friends there is tough. I do agree that maybe you should get extra season end bonuses for team vs. solo, but then you run across all the common problems with team rankings...boosting, win trading, etc. I'd rather they leave things the way they are then introduce that garbage. Playing with 5 people you know and trust should be it's own reward.

Those ryze changes, its pretty much a slight nerf early game and huge boost mid/late game, doesn't make sense on someone who already had a slow early game and really good late game, but I'll take it.

The removal of mana from banshee's veil kinda sucks though.