League of Legends - Trumped up Rock, Paper, Scissors

[GORDON]

Yeah fine. I just jumped in the solo queue for some PVP.

I was a nanosecond late calling top, so hey wanted my Singed support bottom... with Thresh. We did great on the bottom. I personally got a double kill at first contact about 3 minutes in, and Thresh had a double kill as soon as they respawned and came back 5-6 minutes in. At one point the score was 10-1 as I killed the first turret.

And long story short, my team would never follow me in to push at the right time, and we ended up getting beaten while leading in kills about 35-30. Enemy team had a very well-fed Zed at the end.

So that is what I get in solo queue.

[Cakedaddy]

When I play solo queue, of course I try to win, but I mainly use it for training. Trying a different champ, watching other people play theirs. If you are just trying to win and have a fun game, you shouldn't be in SQ. I lose most of my SQ games. Look at my ranked record. But I know what to expect when I'm in a ranked game.

[GORDON]

Regarding my "Why did the turret stop targeting Hecarim" accusation...

According to the replay, the turret was targeting a minion directly under him, then targeted another minion after that. Hec was never the target.



Edited By GORDON on 1359092836

[Stranger]

Just a couple notes on Thresh that i noticed in game yesterday. His lantern is prolly his best ability. I know its a different mechanic and it takes some getting used to, i know i will need to get better at knowing when and where is the best place to lay it. Just remember, all you have to do is click it and you will go directly to my location. It does also give a shield to anyone thats in the area, but thats not what its most useful for.

So some situations i would be using it:

-the first thing that comes to mind would be a tower dive. I place the lantern up by the enemy tower and proceed to walk back. Whoever is around dives on the enemy, gains a shield, kills them and clicks on the lantern and is now back in the protection of thier awesome support. Note, i can also throw this over walls.

-Second, engaging.. i drop the lantern at my current location, land my hook and pull myself to the enemy. One of you click the lantern and teleport to my location and proceed to kill. This is a good way of getting two of us on someone really quickly from long range, as his hook is longer than Blitz's.

-falling behind when we are chasing? click on the lantern to catch up to the group.. The reverse is true if we are getting chased.

-in trouble in the jungle? see a lantern? click it to hop over walls to safety. Just think of it as another flash, but one that can cover three times the distance.

There are obviously many uses for this, and the range at which you can teleport to me is HUGE. Seriously it has some major range. But its gonna take some getting used to. I had troubles landing his hook on many occasions cause it has a long slow wind-up. So i will be trying him out a little more cause i think his utility can be very useful. I will need to get better at placing it in the right locations for its best use. But by all means, use it liberally thats what its there for.

[Cakedaddy]

I heard there was some discussion regarding role changes. What's the dealio?

[Stranger]

must have been discussed after i logged off. im up for whatever, just tell me my roll and i'll own!

[GORDON]

News to me.

[Leisher]

Just a couple notes on Thresh that i noticed in game yesterday.

There was one moment that really impressed me with him. When we were caught in the jungle, and you went one way, and I went the other. The enemy chased me and you threw your lantern over the wall. At the time, I didn't know to look for it, but afterwards I thought about it, and that was pretty cool.

Aside from that, he seems to be a squishy Blitzcrank.

The lantern is cool, but is it too gimmicky, and taking away from more valuable abilities? I mean, it's great for running away, and...ganking? I don't know. We'll have to keep trying him and find out.

Perhaps he's the initiator we've been needing? He flings out his chain, catches someone, then ults when their team responds?

I heard there was some discussion regarding role changes. What's the dealio?

Some discussion, but not like anyone was saying, "This is what we're doing now!"

Last night was essentially a throw away night. Gordo was rocking GP, Stranger was firsting Thresh, I was boting Teemo, etc. It certainly wasn't our normal lineup. However, we did learn some things and that's mainly what was discussed.

I'll number these so they're easy to reference:

1. Team comp MUST be discussed. (The biggest issue to a few of us.)

We often go into games as the squishier team, and without a solid initiator. When Cake was rocking Amumu, he had that massive ult that was the key to starting and winning fights. We're missing that, and it's amazing because multiple people on the team have complained about it for a while. The answer isn't making Cake always play Amumu, but someone in every game has to have that initiate/aoe/multiple stun/slow ability for our fights.

2. As for roles...
-Theo really wants to get to top, and honestly, he's not our best mid, especially without Akali. He claims his Wu-Kong and Shyvana are awesome at top. Both are good initiators...
-Anyway, the talk was if he moved to top, where does Gordo go, who fills mid, etc.

If you're wondering, my thought for Gordo would be jungle as a tank. He's used to tanking with Singed, but he needs a tank with a great init like Amumu or Rammus. Rammus might be up his alley since his aoe is sort of like the Singed poisoning mechanic. Nunu support is still an option too.

Although...you know who used to give me problems in mid? Critplank. The whole build was setup to give him the best possible chance for crit hits via his Q, and maximum damage. He was an asshole. He'd barely farm, and mostly just harass, which sent me home to heal...a lot. Then he'd farm. It's not fun to lane against a guy who's taking 1/3 to 1/2 of your health each hit.

3. We need to pull our heads out of our asses and stop holding ourselves back. One thing our team has always suffered from is a fear of failing. It typically rears its head when we get into losing streaks. We try too hard to do our role, and the team gets sacrificed in the process. I know I'm one of the best examples of this problem.

We're just making stupid mistakes, and we need to minimize them. In fact, "minimize the damage" should be our mantra.

Examples:
-Are two of us being chased down mid lane back to our base with no help available? Break off in different directions. This gives both better odds of survival, makes aoe attacks worthless, and stalls for more time for our defense.
-STOP CHASING!
-Still attacking dragon despite knowing the entire enemy team is there and knows we're there.
-Not rushing into fights one at a time (one of Cake's biggest complaints), but at the same time, knowing not to group up in a line for someone's ult.
-Pathfinding. This one is a common mistake. Many of us take the shortest path at all times, which can be fine, but I can't count how many times I've watched teammates go in a direct line from X-Y to help defend or whatever from the enemy team, which is also between X-Y. Go the long, safer route, PLEASE! I'd rather use some mana to try and delay the enemy team a few more seconds then watch you get massacred in a 5v1 that almost always leads to our 1 at a time patented fighting style.

4. Feeding - We're doing way too much of it. We need to stop taking so many risks and getting out of position or just losing focus.

Not sure what the fix is on that, but our games would go so much better if we'd stop giving other teams a huge money lead.

So yeah, nothing ground breaking, and really nothing that hasn't been brought up previously.

[GORDON]

I was wondering about GP in the jungle. I could start trying that.

[GORDON]

I'll be on 10ish. Not later, most likely.

[Cakedaddy]

I'm questioning the assigned role thing now. I'm a better Graves than Leisher (I think!), he's a better Teemo mid than I am Veigar mid. I'm a better Ziggs mid than Theo is Ahri mid. Etc. No one is better at support than Stranger though. Which is a HUGE problem when he's not playing. . . .

Point is, play our strengths instead of our roles. We had some really good games with the new line up early. Then we played sloppy, then theo got owned at top.

As your leader, what happened at top with Theo isn't going to happen again! A melee champ against Darius is what makes him "op". ANY champ who gets to farm an easy champ is going to be "op". I don't think Darius is any more op than Trynd. Had Theo gone with Jayce instead of Wu that game, it would have been VERY different. Even late game with Darius super over fed, I wasn't afraid to face him and even scored a couple kills on him. But I'm ranged. I know how far his axe reaches now, and even when I got caught in it, I had my dash on reserve. I would also go back and heal when I'm at 75%, because I know he can burst the shit out of me. Yes, I made mistakes that game too. I'm just sharing what I know about Darius and how to fight him. Theo even admitted "Darius is a perfect counter to Wu". Why did we leave it that way?

The last two games, we didn't get beat by better teams, we were stupid. The second to last game, we got zoned out by Kog. Then his range and power really became an issue and things went down hill fast. I've often preached pink eye as jungler, but haven't been practicing it real well lately. After laning against two teams in a row that used vision wards and pink eye of their own to keep us blind. . . No more. It's back to being the second item on my buy list. Not after boots. Not after some damage items. Right out of the gate. By the time Gordon showed up with pink eye, the damage had long been done. Varus had a huge CS lead over me because Sona would park in the weeds next to us and poke and slow to Varus could poke and slow. At one point, I almost bought pink eye because I figued it would pay for it self by letting me farm again!

Scooty's build order was crazy wacky, in my opinion. He was building boots and a black cleaver as Caitlyn before damage items. He was doing hardly any damage.

My second to last game, I fed hard against Kog. I don't know how to counter him to be honest. I don't know that we had anyone on the board that could have done any better. His range. Blah. If anyone has anything for this. . . speak up. But that made me pull my head out of my ass and made sure I didn't feed the next (last) game.

I think tonight's games prepared us for ranked games better than other games in the past. Instead of shoe horning us into rolls with champs that aren't our strong points because that's our roll, we played champs we were good at in different rolls. Ranked game, Ez gets banned or picked, don't force Leisher to play Graves if it's not a good match. Let someone who feels better there play it. I feel better as Graves right now than I do Veigar mid. I think Leisher did better as Teemo mid than he does Graves carry. That was an excellent switch in my opinion. I felt Gordon finally had a really good game as Gang out of the jungle. I WOULD like to see more ganks. But the second game, he had a really good score and was knocking a lot of champs down late game. Normally, he's the first one to die in a fight.

Last two games tonight, we just lost our focus.

Champs I like to see on the board:
Amumu
Naut
Graves
Ez
Wu
Gang
Teemo
Ziggs
Trynd
Any of Stranger's supports except Blitz. 1/10/4 as blitz. Blah! I don't expect a lot of kills from our support, but normally it's like 3/11/27. With 4 assist.. .. . who were you supporting!!
Akali

Champs I'd like to see on the board:
Jayce
Nidalee
Fizz
Xin
Cho

Those guys counter a lot of champs we have trouble with and are hard to deal with when played well.

And yes, I have a lot of my champs on that list. BUT, I build my list based on what I see other people play in ranked games and how well they do. I don't always play as good as them, but I see the potential, so they are on my list.

I've been revisiting Rengar because the latest patch put some life back into him. Not sure if he should be on our list because I don't know he fits our team comps yet.

[GORDON]

It seemed like in the last 2 games not only was i getting counterjungled a lot harder than in the first 2 games, but i was forced to leave the jungle sooner in order to protect lanes, thus getting farm slower. Not criticizing, just giving my perspective.

[Cakedaddy]

I've got Xin and Nid. Xin i've always had, Nid i'll practice, always been good with the skill shots (xerath is a living walking breathing skill shot....) hahah

[Cakedaddy]

This and the above post were from Trooper/Scooty...... Failed to realize Cake was logged in on this computer instead of me!

[GORDON]

I'm going to ban Cakedaddy for sharing his account/not securing his shit.

[GORDON]

"How did Pantheon survive getting poisoned with 1 bar of health left?

Watched our replay.

Pantheon:
- No heal pots.
- No Heal spell
- No one on his team had heal spell
- 110 HP left when he hit my poison

Me:
- Poison was supposed to be doing 80 points of damage per second.
- Poison damages for 3 seconds.

Pantheon got poisoned with 110 points of health.

He dipped down to 12 points before he recalled and survived.

Inconclusive. Must have the +17HP per second regen runes.



Edited By GORDON on 1359349444

[Cakedaddy]

You can view the profile of people you play against and look at their rune pages and masteries.

[Stranger]

Its not that hard to get your HP regen to a pretty high level. Hell, just one Warmogs gives you 1.5% max hp regen per 5 seconds. So at 3000 HP he would have 45 HP regen at 5 seconds or 9 HP per second. Add to that some masteries, runes, maybe another item and base HP regen, he could easily walk away from the poison trail.

[Leisher]

[Stranger]

I wanna play some more ARAM!