League of Legends

[Ganelon]

I was originally furious about this latest patch (I still am about Twitch's Spray and Pray being nerfed into the ground. It should at least only deal reduced damage after passing through champions), but apparently Urgot's finally getting a scaling buff on his Acid Hunters again, at the cost of his base AD scaling. That's usually a pretty big deal, so I decided to find out if I've been cheated or not.

As it turns out, 160 is the exact point where your bonus AD will give you the same benefit as your base AD would at level 18. I deem this... acceptable.

[Kersakof]

I play anyone I can get my grubby hands on. Still doesn't work most of the time. It's probably a mistake to just go one build for every single AP carry, sorc shoes RoA Rylai's deathcap zhonya's and the skull stick thing, but it seems like the best in survivability terms.

[owenster]

I've gotten to the point with Anivia that I rarely if ever lose when I pick her, but I can't be arsed to constantly play her just so I don't have bad games. A while ago my friends had me constantly play Anivia just so we would win every game. It just made the game into a cycle of "who was I going to outplay in mid lane next?" That's why I like Jayce, even though he can be op he's really versatile.

[SaintCrazy]

I've noticed my mage builds have been getting tankier without me meaning to. I think it might be because in some games i get too impatient to sit there and farm for a Rab's, so I end of getting Rod of Ages or Rylais or items that build from a blasting wand.

When I play Veigar and build anything other than Rab's people will sometimes rage at me, but honestly, it can be really effective. People expect me to die in two hits, but I either escape or take down their entire enemy team. One problem is more health is less useful without spell vamp, though, and there isn't always time/room to build a WotA.

Still, I can support a tankier AP mid. Can't support stacking Rylai's though. At that point you might as well get a Warmog's and troll everybody.

[Verom]

save for some champs rushing a rabadons usually isn't necessary. It's usually my second big purchase on veigar. dfg is just too much burst I'm not will to wait for.

[Ganelon]

If you're going to stack AP items, you could at least make them Rods of Ages. Seriously, we're talking about 80 AP and 500 health per item, versus 60-80 AP, 450-630 health, and 525-725 mana, for 70 gold less. Go ahead and get one Rylai's for the extremely useful slowing effect, but anything more and you're just being needlessly inefficient.

[Kersakof]

Do you not understand the effectiveness or the Scepters? They stack on eachother's mana, and give the same AP for it as well. So with 2 scepters I get 240 AP, and son on. If you stack RoA you won't get the massive amount of AP that you do with the scepters. If you do I want to kill myself, right now.

[Mugenman88]

Do you not understand the effectiveness or the Scepters? They stack on eachother's mana, and give the same AP for it as well. So with 2 scepters I get 240 AP, and son on. If you stack RoA you won't get the massive amount of AP that you do with the scepters. If you do I want to kill myself, right now.

Wait...

...

You're talking about Archangel staffs, aren't you?

[Ganelon]

Archangel's Staff is largely ignored by the community for good reason. What does it give you aside from AP? Mana becomes meaningless with the blue buff and it's basically impossible to run out of it over the course of a single teamfight unless you're extremely wasteful, and that's with the standard build which doesn't even include mana-increasing items. What's more, it's expensive (2855 gold), provides no substantial amount of AP until you've already stacked multiple copies, can't build mana efficiently by any champion that lacks low mana cost spam abilities, and provides no additional benefit.

When I say "additional benefit", I don't even mean tankiness. I mean stuff like Rabadon's 30% additional AP scaling, Zhonya's 2-second ultimate panic button, Rylai's insane kiting potential, Lich Bane's 1:1 AP scaling on up to one auto attack every 2 seconds (that's physical damage, by the way), Morello's massive cooldown reduction and healing reduction active, the ability to shred health with Deathfire's Grasp and MR with Void Staff, the unmatched AP self-sustain of Will of the Ancients, and funny enough, the ability of Athene's Unholy Grail to forever fix your mana problems by itself while still granting you massive amounts of AP and cooldown reduction.

If you think that AP is all that matters for a caster, I have the perfect image for you:



Here's some extra context for you, too. The Veigar, LeBlanc, and Lux on the enemy team all had fully stacked Mejai's. Veigar sold his before the game ended because he couldn't stop dying to me. I won that game for several reasons:

- None of the enemy casters built more than a single "tanky" item.
- None of the enemy casters built a Void Staff to get through my MR. Veigar's Abyssal Scepter was easily ignored by the fact that it wasn't capable of removing even a tenth of my damage mitigation.
- I simultaneously stacked resistances and damage, which allowed me to start fights on my own terms without fear of dying to unavoidable damage sources like Veigar's ultimate or during periods where I was stunned or silenced. The enemy Lux was a perfect example of everything wrong with single-mindedly stacking damage stats. She never entered my engagement range and thus couldn't stop me from killing her teammates or taking her towers. Were she less threatened by the unpreventable reality of her taking damage in order to deal it back to me, she might have been able to win the game, being far more fed than I was at a much earlier point in time.
- Finally, the entire enemy team played very poorly. It goes without saying that mine played even worse, but I personally knew everyone except our Yi, and getting them to effectively serve as distractions so that I could fight the enemy team three-to-one instead of five-to-one (or at least have enemy towers being pushed while fighting five-to-one), eased up a lot of pressure on me and spared me the CC stacking that could easily have crushed any hope I had of winning. By that point in the game, even sending them on suicidal tasks was hardly a benefit to the enemy since their gold bounties were negligible and most of the enemy players had full builds.

[Myk]

holy shit. what's your normal elo?

[Eat_box]

The only cool thing about stacking archangel's is that it's mana to AP passive isn't unique. That's about it.

[SaintCrazy]

I feel like I should be taking notes.

I never build Archangel's either, if I need mana I'll just get a chalice into Athene's because holy cow Athene's is great in every way, so I never bothered getting a Tear. In fact, I only seem to use it to get a Manamune on AD caster type champs, which I don't really play too often.

[Kersakof]

I should stop posting my stupid ideas on a forum full of smart people.
Also, I only get 22/5 if I'm fed.
I usually go negative.
As for enough health to engage and etc., I never have that because the enemy team ALWAYS deals too much damage. There is never a time when they don't, unless of course they are feeding. If there is a balanced game ever for me, it's when people actual /care/. Due to this being 1 out of every 20-30 games, I do not have the proper league experience to even /say/ whether or not actually building tanky-ish mage is viable for my playstyle.

For one, it's hard for me to NOT being in range of a team fight due to many games being bitched at even if it was a terrible engagement (The threat of solo q's.)

Also, along with this, while premades could be considered, none of my friends play with me more than one game.

So therefore, I go to the most toxic environment on LoL so I can look cool while doing bad. Also, while worse than normal LoL, PBE offers that chance to try out stupid builds like mine without a team insta-hitting the report button when the game ends. There is nothing stupider on LoL than people reporting you 15 times a day on a server that matters than one that doesn't due to bad playstyle, and I guess you could say potential fear that RIOT will get off their asses and actually ban me.

Call it paranoia, but while some people deserve it, the Tribunal has no mercy.

As for my builds, they probably don't do any damage since I get counter picked or just do badly. I usually don't get the mana pen staff because there is few games where the enemy team gets more than just one MR item. I would be better off shredding HP with the skull item thing, but I never get it in my building usually because I am trying to use stay alive items that apparently never work for me.

I can't blame my team, so I just blame myself for this repetitive failure.

So is anyone else's strong point AD ranged carries? I hate them with a passion since they die so easily. The only one I can handle is Ezreal. I usually go tank or support in games anyways since I'm near useless. Tanky Renekton that's fed is also funny when people think their turrets can save them from my hunger.

Referring to the post above me, I was told Manamune isn't a good damaging item anymore. I have to partially agree with this statement, since if people are having mana problems, they are either 1. In lane wasting or 2. Shoulda B'd anyways. If you use your mana responsibly, I am sorry for the inconvience of having trolls that only complain about the other team instead of themselves. While having 1k mana is good for lane, I personally think later in the game 3 blood thirsters 2 phantom dancers and an infinity edge goes great with most AD carries. Ranged anyways.

I also have an issue with Spell Vamp and Life Steal. Life steal is only good on crits most of the time, hence my build above, but both seem to just be "getting back in the game." I think RIOT should introduce more Spell Vamp items that can give our items more diversity, since the tomb I get I usually get nothing in return for using my spells on enemy champs. If this is another problem with not going Void Rod, I want to throw my computer at someone.

Never had such a high CS either. I blame the high amount of team fights that happen and I take part in.

[Shoolis]

New twitch is interesting, feels more in line with current ad carries. My only wish is that venom cask dealt damage beyond the poison.

[Ganelon]

holy shit. what's your normal elo?

This was before they even changed the end-of-game UI, and I was queued up with three of those people. I don't think they were all level 30 yet at that point.

I should stop posting my stupid ideas on a forum full of smart people.
Also, I only get 22/5 if I'm fed.
I usually go negative.
As for enough health to engage and etc., I never have that because the enemy team ALWAYS deals too much damage. There is never a time when they don't, unless of course they are feeding. If there is a balanced game ever for me, it's when people actual /care/. Due to this being 1 out of every 20-30 games, I do not have the proper league experience to even /say/ whether or not actually building tanky-ish mage is viable for my playstyle.

For one, it's hard for me to NOT being in range of a team fight due to many games being bitched at even if it was a terrible engagement (The threat of solo q's.)

There is no surviving an entire enemy team worth of damage, if that's your goal. That's a job for release Mordekaiser or a fed Singed if ever there was one. However, taking this kind of damage means that you're in range of all five enemy champions, which shouldn't be happening ever unless you get hit by some deadly CC and they move in to stack even more of it onto you, or you get pulled by Blitzcrank. Riot's usually pretty good about making CC avoidable, whether it's in the form of skillshots or conditional effects like Cassiopeia's ultimate, which makes your first priority dodging death and your second priority dealing it.

In short, you need tanky stats because there are some things that simply can't be avoided if you ever want to be within range of the champion using them, and there are some situations where there's no way to get out unharmed. These will happen no matter how hard you try to prevent them, but it's not always going to be 1v5. Even during a teamfight, it's entirely possible that you'll only have to leave yourself open to one enemy at a time if you position yourself well. Enemies who dedicate themselves to stopping you make very easy targets for the rest of your team, provided you have a way to survive the encounter (at which point they'll be chasing you right next to four enemies, likely alone). Zhonya's comes in handy here, for instance. So does Flash.

Also, along with this, while premades could be considered, none of my friends play with me more than one game.

Can't help you here. Having friends to play with and having friends that are as good as (but not significantly better than) you are both important.

So therefore, I go to the most toxic environment on LoL so I can look cool while doing bad. Also, while worse than normal LoL, PBE offers that chance to try out stupid builds like mine without a team insta-hitting the report button when the game ends. There is nothing stupider on LoL than people reporting you 15 times a day on a server that matters than one that doesn't due to bad playstyle, and I guess you could say potential fear that RIOT will get off their asses and actually ban me.

Call it paranoia, but while some people deserve it, the Tribunal has no mercy.

Pendragon has taken pretty much every reasonable step to prove that the Tribunal system works, simply not the way that the guilty expect it to (not on them). If you can find a way to justify your build, be polite, and actually attempt to win the game, you're already going to be far less deserving of a ban than most people in the community.

As for my builds, they probably don't do any damage since I get counter picked or just do badly. I usually don't get the mana pen staff because there is few games where the enemy team gets more than just one MR item. I would be better off shredding HP with the skull item thing, but I never get it in my building usually because I am trying to use stay alive items that apparently never work for me.

I can't blame my team, so I just blame myself for this repetitive failure.

I really have to question just which champion you''re playing that can't get results like this. I mean, your build is heavily stacked (and not that well optimized) towards the late-game, so it's entirely possible that people are winning against you early-on, which means that you won't have the income to help your build, which is especially bad when the item you're stacking gets exponentially better but starts out as a huge waste of cheddar, but I've never seen someone both doing no damage and also being an easy kill unless they fed.

So is anyone else's strong point AD ranged carries? I hate them with a passion since they die so easily. The only one I can handle is Ezreal. I usually go tank or support in games anyways since I'm near useless. Tanky Renekton that's fed is also funny when people think their turrets can save them from my hunger.

Referring to the post above me, I was told Manamune isn't a good damaging item anymore. I have to partially agree with this statement, since if people are having mana problems, they are either 1. In lane wasting or 2. Shoulda B'd anyways. If you use your mana responsibly, I am sorry for the inconvience of having trolls that only complain about the other team instead of themselves. While having 1k mana is good for lane, I personally think later in the game 3 blood thirsters 2 phantom dancers and an infinity edge goes great with most AD carries. Ranged anyways.

I play Varus, Twitch, and Urgot. In other words, two champions with ridiculously long-ranged abilities and one who can't be targeted at all when fights start. Long story short is that it's basically okay to focus the tank if that's the only enemy who you would feel safe attacking, because you deal so much damage that you'll threaten anyone regardless of their items, but only so long as you're alive. It's the job of assassins and tanky DPS to cause problems for the enemy carries, not yours, and you'll likely be dealing with the same thing yourself.

As for Manamune, it's good for a very specific number of champions. Urgot would be an obvious example whom you should always get it on regardless of circumstance, but no other ranged carry has enough mana problems to really justify it.

I also have an issue with Spell Vamp and Life Steal. Life steal is only good on crits most of the time, hence my build above, but both seem to just be "getting back in the game." I think RIOT should introduce more Spell Vamp items that can give our items more diversity, since the tomb I get I usually get nothing in return for using my spells on enemy champs. If this is another problem with not going Void Rod, I want to throw my computer at someone.

Never had such a high CS either. I blame the high amount of team fights that happen and I take part in.

Agreed about the spell vamp. This game really needs a late-game spell vamp item that doesn't give you ridiculous sustain while laning is still relevant. Both stats are a pretty big deal because they let you start important fights at full health without requiring you to leave and risk not being there when the action starts, but lifesteal is found in abundance on one of the best AD items in the game, and it's easier to heal through auto-attacks than it is through spells anyways.

Also, no. Void Staff isn't going to help you heal off minions at all. You may be interested in buying the (very expensive) spell vamp quintessences, though, since they'll start you off with 6%. I use them on my Akali page in the extremely rare cases where I feel like playing her, and along with her passive, I can start the game with 14%, then get another 12% from the Hextech Revolver. It gets pretty noticeable at that point, though it almost never hits a point where you can just jungle in between fights and come back at full health.

New twitch is interesting, feels more in line with current ad carries. My only wish is that venom cask dealt damage beyond the poison.

My only wish is that they didn't destroy his ultimate just to make Expunge his main source of dealing damage. It's done nothing but make him less unique, and it wasn't even related to the problems he had involving stealth.