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Don’t hate on the support

By admin on May 8, 2011 in

As I previously mentioned, I’ve been playing a lot of support champions in the past week or so. For the most part Lux, Sona and a bit of my once favorite Zilean. I’m definitely not the greatest player ever as I’ve stated before but some of the hate I’m getting is just ridiculous. And most of it is not even directly aimed at my performance but rather the perception people get that support champions are useless. And in fact they are useless…

… if you don’t know how to utilize them. Here’s a few things you should know about your friendly neighborhood support champion!

First of all support champions can rarely carry games. That doesn’t mean they can suck and still do okay, but it means that if the rest of the team is doing poorly there’s not much that a support champion can do to turn the game around in his/her favor. Yes, a good Janna/Sona ult can win games, but it’s up to the team to tank, do DPS on proper targets, and even support you by helping if you get focused.

I’ll throw you shields and heals and do my best to help you survive whether you’re a tank or carry, but my heals have cooldowns, they don’t heal for over 9000 and I may even run out of mana. I get silenced, stunned, zoned out as well but again, I’ll do my best to support you which is my role.

Don’t complain that I don’t do any damage. I let you have every single minion kill in lane and my main source of gold are Philosopher Stones and the passive income. I’d love to get my hands on Rabadon’s but in most cases it’s not going to happen. It’s your job to farm and kill people. Hell, I don’t even take kills from you: if you weren’t too busy looking at my item build and the score half the game you would notice how many times I stopped attacking when we got a sure kill on someone.

I warded the map for you the entire game. The dragon we managed to get was partly due to our good map control, and the lizard buff you stole from the enemy team was because my ward or my Clairvoyance made it possible. The double-kill you got in bottom lane was because I was the one baiting them and risking my life: you stood behind and autoattacked, so your 9:0 score at the end of the game is not only you playing well. And my 0:5:25 doesn’t mean I’m useless.

Yes, I do screw up sometimes. But so does everyone. If your support doesn’t feed and is playing as a team, in most cases he or she is not the reason you lost the match.

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If LoL had portals

By admin on May 6, 2011 in

Not going to post anything useful today, but rather a video I found. This is what happens when you add a portal gun in League of Legends.

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New PvP.net patcher – what’s new?

By admin on May 5, 2011 in

So the new PvP.net launcher is officialy live since today (or yesterday, depending where you play from). I haven’t really been paying much attention about it until now so not sure if this feature is already known or not, but it certainly caught me off guard.

The new PvP.net Patcher represents a huge stride forward for us both in both technology and convenience. Not only will it relieve many of the technical difficulties that some League of Legends players may have experienced in the past when updating the game, but it also represents the removal of a technical blocker to some of our most anticipated features. While there is still work to be done, this new PvP.net Patcher will be able to launch older versions of League of Legends, allowing us to implement a polished replay system that will not break each time we distribute a new update for League of Legends.

So not only can we (or rather, will be able to) retire the unofficial LoL Replay app that some have been using, the official replays will surprisingly work with older versions. I remember back from my days of Warcraft III that replays couldn’t be watched if the game version it was saved on was different than the current one you had, so having such functionality in League of Legends is extremely awesome. We’ll be able to download and watch games regardless of the version or date when it was recorded, and I’m sure some of you will agree it’s a huge step forward. I’m sure some of the bigger LoL websites out there will soon have a database of matches we’ll be able to watch, hopefully with a decent rating system.

Riot is almost as notorious as Blizzard when it comes to dates, so all we have for now is “soon“. They said the same for Magma Chamber, the highly anticipated new map, and that was what, a year ago? Hopefully it won’t take nearly as long for them to finish the replay system. If some random person can develop a 3rd party replay app which isn’t perfect but it works, then Riot should be able to do the same, but hopefully even better.

Here’s a tip in case you haven’t logged in yet: be sure to run a custom game first, as the launcher resets all of your settings and keybinds. For some odd reason I wasn’t able to move or cast spells occasionally in my first game, as my keyboard and mouse were completely unresponsive for a few minutes after changing key bindings.

There is also one significant change in the LoL interface now, as Riot describes:

  • updated interface to better reflect our matchmaking system

You can see the result below:

(no, unfortunately I made this last part up)

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How 1500 ELO looks like

By admin on May 5, 2011 in

Seen a lot of this today

In order to better depict to you exactly how playing on 1500 rating looks like, I decided to write a few details about several matches I played today. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been playing almost twice as many games per day, but had a headache today and spent a lot of time sleeping. Nevertheless, a total of 7 matches is still a decent example.

 

Game 1

My team:

  • Malzahar (me)
  • Xin (bot)
  • Ashe (top)
  • Sion (bot)
  • Alistar (jungle)

Enemy team:

  • Shaco (jungle)
  • Soraka (bot)
  • Shen (top)
  • Karthus (mid)
  • Ezreal (bot)

I thought I might have trouble against Karthus in mid lane, especially due to Shaco ganks, but I actually managed to farm more and avoid dying to Shaco two times without even using summoners. At level 6 I was also able to kill Karthus once: he went on me for some reason, got caught in full combo and died. I had most CS in both teams the entire game, which is not much of an accomplishment as a Malz anyway. Our Ashe was top lane against Shen, and she sucked; died 2 times and farmed poorly. We all told Sion to go top from the beginning but he had other plans; I did offer Ashe to take mid but she didn’t want to. Ezreal got about 4 kills bottom lane and eventually pushed it. Our Xin complained the whole game about Ashe stealing some of his jungle, and claimed we are all noobs and decided to go zombie mode pushing top lane. Even though we placed wards and pinged like morons he didn’t back even when the entire opposing team went for him. He ended up with 18 deaths.

Part of the problem earlier was that he went 1v1 all the time, completely ignoring the fact that they have 3 global ults, something which I warned about since the beginning of the game. We did have one 5v5 in fact in which we aced the entire enemy team with only one death on our team, after which we got baron. Unfortunately it didn’t do us much good as our Xin was always running around solo and getting caught, speaking to the enemy team how bad we all are. Even though our team might not have played perfectly, we had a strong chance at winning the game if not for his bullshit, so I blame the loss on him.

  • My score: 7-5-7
  • Result: Defeat

Game 2

My team:

  • Me on Lux (bot)
  • Malphite (top)
  • Amumu (jungle)
  • Renekton (bot with me)
  • Akali (mid)

Enemy team:

  • Xin Zhao (jungle; same Xin from first game)
  • Twisted Fate (mid)
  • Taric (bot)
  • Galio (bot)
  • Warwick (top)

Malphite top lane died to Warwick 5 times (a couple of times with the help of enemy Xin Zhao ganks, who by the way managed to die at golems at level 1), and got his tower pushed in 10 minutes. Renekton got harassed with Galio’s Q and E and got to about half HP, then managed to die to him and Taric. I got my spells off but it wasn’t enough to save him. As soon as he got back, I was harassing Taric a bit and got him to half HP, after which my Renekton decided it would be a good idea to tower dive him. He died, blamed me for not throwing a shield on him: in fact, I did give him a shield, but a level 3 Renekton diving is not a good idea regardless. Twisted Fate managed to get a few good TP ganks, once getting a kill on both me and Renekton in bottom lane. Our Amumu didn’t gank at all. Since top and mid lane had towers destroyed, bottom followed soon after. Game was over in 19 minutes with our nexus destroyed. My game highlight: stealing Xin Zhao’s lizard with my E spell. Support Lux with no CS unfortunately can’t carry games.

  • My score: 0-3-3
  • Result: Defeat

Game 3

My team:

  • Morgana (me, mid lane)
  • Caitlyn (bot)
  • Sona (bot)
  • Malphite (top)
  • Udyr (jungle)

Enemy team:

  • Amumu (jungle)
  • Ezreal (bot)
  • Vladimir (mid)
  • Jarvan (top)
  • Soraka (bot)

We invaded the enemy team jungle in hopes of stealing Amumu’s blue. They were all defending, but I managed to bind Vladimir in a bush to the left of the (top) golem with my Morgana’s Q ensuring us a kill. We further moved to the golem, where we found an AFK Ezreal who gave us another kill. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get an assist for that as I was attempting to chase down and bind Amumu, but he ghosted so I couldn’t. After that, the game was a stomp. I was mid against a Vladimir, and even though I wasn’t really able to harass him much I did farm more than him, and sent him healing twice. Also had time to go top lane and get an easy kill on Jarvan, with the assistance of Udyr as well. Enemy bot lane lost their tower in about 8 minutes or so, because Ezreal died twice and then decided to AFK. Soraka fortunately can’t heal turrets. Game was over in 17 minutes.

  • My score: 1-0-8
  • Result: Victory

Game 4

My team:

  • Nidalee (me, bot lane)
  • Ashe (bot)
  • Irelia (top)
  • Akali (mid)
  • Amumu (jungle)

Enemy team:

  • Malphite (bot)
  • Janna (bot)
  • Lee Sin (top)
  • Udyr (jungle)
  • Karthus (mid)

I managed to die twice bot lane due to Udyr ganks. Ashe was pushing the lane too much with Volleys. I let her have all CS which didn’t help her much, and hurt me a lot. Conclusion: Nidalee needs a solo lane. Can’t support at all without farm. All lanes got pooped on basically, and we lost. Even after the laning phase people overextended in their jungle without much map control and despite my poor score I’m don’t think I personally lost this game (everyone was dying a lot, I just wasn’t getting any kills because the fed Udyr 3-shotted me every time). However, I certainly didn’t help anyone much this game.

  • My score: 0-9-4
  • Result: Defeat

Game 5

My team:

  • Sona (me, bot lane)
  • Ashe (bot)
  • Vladimir (mid)
  • Irelia (top)
  • Alistar (jungle)

Enemy team:

  • Miss Fortune (mid)
  • Jarvan (bot)
  • Evelynn (bot)
  • Udyr (jungle)
  • Renekton (top)

Bought 2 wards right from the start to make sure we don’t get Udyr ganked, however Ashe constantly Volleyed the creeps and pushed the lane. We did see Udyr come along with his trusted red buff, but Ashe stayed mid-lane for some reason, after which the opposing Udyr and Jarvan both got kills on us. I stayed in hopes of helping her live but it didn’t work out, so I ended up dying as well. Vladimir managed to die in middle lane 4 times to Miss Fortune alone, quickly losing the turret as well. Irelia did okay, even getting a double kill up top when Udyr came to gank her, however she died to an Ignite as well. The game was quite one-sided, with the enemy team constantly diving us, doing our jungle, getting free dragons, and split pushing which we had a hard time dealing with — they were ahead about 20 kills and 2 dragons. I lost hope quite early since the enemy team was fed too much, but my team still had plans on winning.

We played extremely defensive, doing our best to protect turrets and fight along them whenever possible. I bought easily 40 wards this game alone, along with an oracle elixir which I actually had for about 10 minutes. Came in handy in destroying their wards on Baron and our jungle. We stopped one of their baron attempts quite successfully, but the team decided to chase them down which ended up quite badly for us (3 for 3 I think, but we could of gotten baron instead). After we respawned we went to re-ward the baron, however my team decided to split from me halfway there which resulted in my death and no baron ward. The opposing team got baron shortly afterwards, and a couple of minutes later 3 of them died when they pushed our bottom base turret (we already lost an inhibitor in mid by that time). We did our best to defend the base at that time, and even managed to catch and kill their GA Renekton pushing mid lane. After that we had a 4v5 which we won: none of us died, and 2 of them did. We then pushed mid and dived Jarvan and Evelynn, and since I still had my ultimate we disposed of them quickly. We pushed straight for the base, got tower and inhibitor, killed the respawned Renekton at the double turrets and destroyed the Nexus. Quite a comeback I might say, and for me very unexpected.

  • My score: 1-7-14
  • Result: Victory

Game 6

My team:

  • Shen (me, top lane)
  • Vladimir (mid)
  • Nunu (jungle)
  • Ashe (bot)
  • Poppy (bot)

Enemy team:

  • Jarvan (top)
  • Brand (mid)
  • Amumu (jungle)
  • Sona (bot)
  • Miss Fortune (bot)

Our bot lane did really well at the start, with two Nunu ganks resulting in a total of 4 kills, one for Ashe and 3 three for Nunu. After that however Poppy and Ashe started arguing after dying twice, both of them, giving MF three kills and Sona another. After that my entire team did the stupidest tower dive in bot lane I’ve ever seen, resulting in them all dying for a net profit of zero kills. My ult unfortunately didn’t save anyone. I think I was doing well top lane: I had a bit more CS than Jarvan, and managed to send him healing twice with my Q/Ki Strike harass. Up till the point where I was 4-(fed)man tower dived, with none of my teammates around. Surrendered at the 20 minute mark.

  • My score: 1-2-4
  • Result: Defeat

Game 7

My team:

  • Swain (me, mid lane)
  • Maokai (bot)
  • Jarvan (top)
  • Renekton (jungle)
  • Nidalee (top)

(FOTM team for sure)

Enemy team:

  • Malzahar (mid)
  • Ezreal (bot)
  • Singed (top)
  • Xin Zhao (jungle)
  • Ashe (bot)

The game already started badly on champion selection, and moreover when Nidalee and Jarvan both wanted to solo top. Turned out, it’s “better” if they duo lane top then one of them solo, so how can it possibly go well after that. Maokai, who by the way played really well overall, unsurprisingly couldn’t handle Ezreal and Ashe alone. By the 10 minute mark the enemy Xin Zhao already had a 9-1 score; just for the record, I wasn’t responsible for any of those — I noticed it because I was the one who gave him the 10th kill when he came to gank mid. As far as my lane goes, I was against a Malzahar. Kept up with his farm, and managed to kill him once on level 6 as well (I had Ghost and Flash, he had Ignite and Flash, but I had a full wave of minions fighting on my side when he went for me).

Not sure at which point it happened, but Renekton decided to zombie mode and intentionally feed the enemy team, especially their Ashe, to a total of 17 deaths this game. Also for all Nidalee players out there, cougar form is used to fight people as well, not only to escape from fights. Believe it or not playing Nid means more than throwing a spear every 8 seconds from screen away. Jarvan overall wasn’t a bad player either, but he chased Ezreal and Ashe several times across the map and then unsurprisingly died to 4 opponents, so he wasn’t overly helpful either. Simply an unwinnable game with players like these.

  • My score: 4-7-6
  • Result: Defeat

I didn’t really carry any of the games I’ve played today, but it’s mostly because I’ve been playing support champions for the past few days. I feel like I did very well with Shen, Malzahar and Swain, and even Lux despite playing 100% support, but for the most part I simply didn’t have a decent team that can fight. From poor champion choices, to weak junglers who don’t gank, feeder carries who autoattack, flamers, trolls and AFKers, I’ve seen them all today. If I forgot anyone I apologize, I’ll be sure to mention you next time.

Overall, this was definitely a bad day. Two wins and 5 losses later I’m at 1450 rating, and I simply have to force myself to play some other champions for awhile. I feel like supporting people with Sona, Zilean and Lux now but I simply can’t carry games with these champions. Thinking of playing Singed, Vladimir or Mordekeiser tomorrow but I can already see the flames in champion selection.

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From the depths of ELO hell

By admin on May 5, 2011 in

I’ve been playing League of Legends for about a year and a half now. I currently have almost 2000 games played total, which is quite a lot. Not as much as some players, but still I’ve invested a lot of time into this game. Not because I have to, not because I’m bored, but because it’s fun. I love playing it, I like owning noobs occasionally, and I have several RL friends that I play with frequently as well. Keeps me engaged and I like wasting time on it.

Sometimes however, the game can also be quite frustrating. I’m not the greatest player ever and I know it: there’s still a lot of skill I need in order to compete with some of the better players, but quite often the LoL‘s matchmaking system teams me up with what appear to be the biggest idiots in the history of this game. And it happens to everyone, just that not everyone who complains about it does it rightfully. I on the other hand know when I suck and have no problem admitting it: sometimes I carry games hard, sometimes I suck just as much as my team does, and sometimes I do average.

I’m currently sitting at around 1500 rating in solo 5v5 on EU server, and just can’t break past 1550, ever. It doesn’t matter how good I play, the game always manages to find some emo kids or skill-less players that ruin the game for the rest. Sometimes, it’s just out of my hands. However, I do firmly believe that if you’re a really good player you can get higher ratings because you’ll carry your team more often. Personally I think I play well enough to easily reach 1700-1800 and compete with those players, it’s just that I don’t play well enough often enough to reach it. Even when I go 6-0 with Ashe in the first 10 minutes of the game, I still lose because there will always be someone on my team feeding someone else just the same.

So while some players don’t believe in ELO hell, it does exist in one form or another. The point is, sometimes the game’s outcome is simply out of your hands no matter how well you play. Sometimes, although extremely rarely in my case, I get carried by my team and still manage to win. Although when I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I fed and won a game.

I don’t know how often I’ll post here and what, but we’ll see. Hopefully there are some players out there interested in reading my rants, first of which could very well be posted tomorrow. You can read a bit more about me on my about page.

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