The Gaming Den

Shockingly, PhoneLobster is right about something: Teaming with your level 30 friends can be quite frustrating when you're working your way up. You get paired against people substantially more experienced than you and they have higher stats, so you're almost guaranteed to do poorly. It really does get very frustrating. I do recommend doing it occasionally, because you can see firsthand how experienced players play, and get realtime feedback on your positioning and lasthitting and so on. But, definitely play by yourself too.

His conspiracy theories about how a champion in development months in advance was timed to coincide with a speech about the state of the meta made days before are just bizarre.

MGuy wrote:I am disappointed that Yorick sucks so fucking much

He's actually really strong in laning. He's one of the biggest lane bullies out there. Not having any real escapes is a problem, though.

Orion, I disagree on two counts. First, you learn twice as fast when you play in lvl30 games, so someone who is willing to lose in new and creative ways will actually get more out of it. I've got a friend who learned that way.

the second is Smurfs. Smurfing is good for everyone.

The only thing smurfing is good for, I find, is that it helps newbies play with someone who knows the ropes without getting thrown into games where everyone else is far, far above them. Otherwise, it just leads to actual newbies getting their shit kicked in by 5-man teams of veterans.

Orion wrote:...a champion in development months in advance...

From what Riot tells us of their internal development processes, it really does take them that long to figure out champions. Honestly, it's impressive that there are so few duds: Karma, Heimerdinger, and perhaps Quinn (Corki, Nami, Olaf, Urgot, Zilean, and champions of that ilk can be viable on the right circumstances, I would think) are the only champions that can really be said to be unviable, and a friend of mine has pulled off some shocking play with Heimerdinger.

Korgan0 wrote:Honestly, it's impressive that there are so few duds

When I played easily half the selection were seriously terrible and about a quarter were so bad as to never be seen.

But more importantly while I played they ignored bug reports and balance advice that would have later saved them egg on their faces from the public forums, especially champion and item balance, they ignored complaints and alerts about bugs from he public test server forums then ended up with egg on their face, repeatedly, out right shut public test servers, and repeatedly time and again released champions, patch changes and remakes that were broken on launch in VARIOUS ways, sometimes in outright straight up bug type ways, let alone their generally terribly balance at release.

EVERY indication is that when Riot claims they are working on an Eve stealth remake for like A YEAR then maybe it one day comes out (has it?) that actually they sat on their hands trolling for 11 months and then knocked it together in like a fortnight based on one dudes drunken rantings after midnight on a Saturday then they push it through to live with no testing, then they hot fix and multiple patch "tweak" it in various, often drastic ways.

This is the company that launched a (2nd time) remade Teemo then within 2 days were on the forums saying, yeah, well they screwed that up and he needs a remake. Yes. They did that. No really.

Seriously I'll say this again Play Smite it is much more fun.

PhoneLobster wrote:Seriously I'll say this again Play Smite it is much more fun.

PL, I've never heard a more compelling criticism of a game than you advocating for it.

Maybe smite isn't terrible, but if you are shilling for it, that seems less likely.

I'm not saying the champions are meticulously balanced before release because they obviously aren't. But it does take a long time to make a champion, not because of extensive balance testing, but because doing voicework, models, animations, and coding new abilities is a lot of work. They commit to a basic character concept pretty early in the process. So basically, someone at Riot decided they should make lots and lots of tanky DPS. Eventually they realized this was a bad idea and announced this. But, they still had some tanky DPS characters scheduled for release. It's not mysterious.

At this point I'm not even sure why PhoneLobster is in this thread anymore. It's started reading as a "stop having fun guys!! Why is everyone playing this and not with me " rant and cry for attention.

If you don't want to play League or talk about playing it with each other or discuss strategy for that, you really should just gtfo.

All right, I'm writing up a smurf because I want another rune page. Don't be surprised if "Oxicillin" adds you.

League is fun as balls.

First thing: Everyone who says Teemo is trash right now is wrong. Teemo is good against disorganized people (solo queue) because he's a good split pusher who wins lane and is good at dueling auto attackers. Just because a champ isn't picked in the LCS doesn't mean they're trash, it just means they don't fit into organized team play in the top .01% of players.

Is the Gaming Den trying to make a group for it? It'd be fun to stop playing yolo queue all the time and play some normals/ARAMs or even ranked 5s.

If the goal is to make an actual TGD team I'm plat II and usually play mid, jungle or support, but can AD or top in a pinch.

Edit: And whoa, Quinn is good too and got a bunch of needless buffs. This is going to be an awful week for ranked.

I play as Kevinblaze, feel free to hit me up ^_^

Anyone played with Lissandra or the Sej rework?

Lissandra:

Lissandra's Q is way too fast to the point where it might as well be a targeted spell. With her mana efficiency in lane (and easy to land CC) she's a huge pain. Her damage is low, but right now she's just obnoxious to lane against because of how strong her poke and CC are.

She's also not that strong after laning ends. Her range isn't the greatest, so her main thing seems to be clawing into the center of the fight, using all her skills, and then ulting herself. It's disruptive and all, but it's just rooting and slowing people while dealing pretty shitty damage. I could see her fitting into a really hard all-in AoE comp, but then why not pick Orianna instead?

She doesn't seem to do anything special come late game, but her laning is seriously ridiculous. Her gank assistance is as easy as "cast claw in opponent's ideal escape direction, swap with it then root if they run or watch them walk into your jungler if they don't." She can make ganks effective even if the jungler is spotted heading into the river because she will ROOT and then SLOW you 100% of the time if you don't flash. Your only hope (sans flash) is bursting her ass down when she teleports to the claw, but she's got really high health for a mid laner so that's probably not happening.


So yeah, she's a lane bully. I don't think there's a single champion who doesn't outscale her, and her CC isn't the kind anybody really cares about. Pick Morgana against her if you want to make her sad. She can't break your shield during a gank and you're more useful late game.


I haven't seen a new Sejuani yet (though I've seen her banned a few times), and Trundle is actually getting picked a bit. He's still balanced, but now that he doesn't have broken ass animations he can actually do the things he's supposed to do.

Lissandra's combined ratios is 2.55AP, which is better than Annie. Her burst damage is 80 less. That's pretty difficult to call bad.

Thanks to her teleport, she stands a chance of getting it all off too. She's basically Puck minus the great initiation, because this game doesn't have Blink Dagger. And I guess the root is worse than the silence is.

The point about Orianna is well made, but Lissandra's full combo is substantially more damage than Orianna's. You might say Orianna isn't meant to full combo and you would be correct, but that makes the champions difficult to compare because Lissandra clearly is. I think her biggest issue right now is that the enemy-cast Frozen Tomb badly needs to be an AoE.

I think she has the easiest waveclear of any champion ever, haha. Like Anivia but without the gigantic mana cost.

I played this for like one week (I got to lvl 11, IIRC). With zero "meta" experience, I had a good time with Veigar, mostly because his extra-Evil(TM) quotes.

Then I bored and went back to Touhou.

I'm pretty sure the enemy-targeted ult is aoe, according to both the Champ Spotlight and League Wiki.

Korgan0 wrote:I'm pretty sure the enemy-targeted ult is aoe, according to both the Champ Spotlight and League Wiki.

I think Surgo is talking about AoE stun, not AoE slow. Also that would make me cry. Switching stun for slow in its current range would make her crazy.

An AoE stun would make her better than Annie 100% of the time but it's not like Annie is a good champion right now.

Surgo wrote:Lissandra's combined ratios is 2.55AP, which is better than Annie. Her burst damage is 80 less. That's pretty difficult to call bad.

I think she has the easiest waveclear of any champion ever, haha. Like Anivia but without the gigantic mana cost.

She isn't hitting anyone with Claw, ever. It's only used for movement because it is slow as hell.

Ori's damage is not just burst when she ults and Ws because she then spams low CD Qs from a pretty safe distance. Lissandra is dead after her combo (unless the enemy team is dead) or not building much damage.

Her ult's AoE doesn't deal very much damage if I recall correctly. It's an effective stun and nuke on a single target, but the area is only good if they have to stand in it for most of the duration.

She might actually be decent as an initiator if you build her as a tanky AP. Her ult, claw, and root are each good initiations on their own. I could see it working with Rumble, since her AoE root and slow synergize with his giant AoE burn damage (that also slows) that he can launch from really far away.

You are right that it's stupidly slow and easy to dodge; it's 150 units slower than Anivia's Q, FFS, which itself is probably the slowest usable skillshot. It seems to me that it's more meant to be like the Puck thing where you use it at point blank range and GTFO at the same time as part of your combo -- flash, root, claw, ult, teleport to claw. Only downside being that League doesn't have a blink dagger, and flash range isn't particularly impressive anymore for doing this sort of thing.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:Ori's damage is not just burst when she ults and Ws because she then spams low CD Qs from a pretty safe distance. Lissandra is dead after her combo (unless the enemy team is dead) or not building much damage.

That was my entire point...we're in violent agreement here.

Yeah, initiating with Flash just doesn't happen unless it's over a wall or used in conjunction with a gap closer. I can't believe claw is slower than Anivia's Q though, that's embarrassing. I guess if it was faster it'd be kind of broken since it has so much fucking range for a movement skill that goes over terrain.

I completely misread your Ori statement.


So how do people on the Den feel about Morgana support? I've found her to be a wonderful counter to Blitzcrank, Thresh and Alistar (as well as jungle Naut and Vi) who shines in teamfights once you get tanky enough or buy a zhonya's. She can afford to play aggressive early and pairs really well with pokers and mobile ADs (particularly Ezreal). The only thing that feels bad about her is her W, but meh, what's one useless skill when you can give somebody CC immunity, have an AoE stun and a long range binding.

Pssst Pseudo, what's your summoner name?

Big Skler.

We should get all the summoner names in the first post, because then I can be lazy and get everyone added without having to read.