This week we announce the winner of the Riot Singed skin! Listen to find out if you won! We also go over our team strats for ranked 5s, talk about some interesting red posts, answer the blog questions, and give our thoughts on the Leona debacle. This week leave us some comments on how we could improve the show, what you want to hear more of, what you want to hear less of, or just general ideas for the podcasts. Thanks to all our listeners and commenters, next week we will be giving away a RP card!
Minions Have Spawned - Episode 17
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Commando Lux completely bombed, people were like "Riot, give us Commando Lux!" They finally did it and everyone complained. Lesson? Don't ask for things from Riot, they will turn it out different than expected. Another example is this so called "Strong independent" woman.
ReplyDeleteOn the thought of heroic stories, I've hit many across the map arrows as Ashe and saved people, or even helped get a kill on someone who was tower diving for a kill.
ReplyDeleteFunny that you guys talked about the 3 AP, 1 tank, 1 AD strategy this week. I was going to ask a few questions about this but you answered a lot in the podcast already. One thing I wanted to add to your discussion is that people tend to pick AP champs with CC (stuns/silence/etc). The most crazy combo I even played against was Fiddles, Veigar, LeBlanc, Ashe, and Taric. Both of our tanks had FoN and HP items and yet they still fell pretty hard due to the fact that they would get stunned/feared for 4-8 seconds followed up with silence to stop the flash.
ReplyDeleteCall it QQ but we need some diminishing returns on CC like they do in WoW. Going to try a full ap team this week: veig, annie, fiddles, lux (or anivia), leblanc. After all, it's just the off-season ;p
ReplyDeleteYeah the utility and AP champion brings is almost always higher than an ad champ. Thats why ashe is so highly valued, and Ad with a ton of utility.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to consider is that its easier to stack AP than it is to stack AD, AD itemization is much worse than AP itemization.
Oh, here's something I've wondered since I started playing, maybe you guys can offer insight.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that you put 1 person top, 1 in the jungle, 1 mid, 2 bot? To me it makes more sense if two people are mid, because now you have 2 people closer to the top lane if it's in trouble, and in the area where there are 2 sides for ganks to come from. If you have 1 guy bot, he only has to worry about one side (Aside from head on or behind, of course) You still have that dragon control, and you have the 2 people in mid closer to both buffs instead of bot being closer to one buff.
Just discovered your podcast, very cool.
ReplyDeleteI'm one of the new wave of LoL players. (probably primarily due to the media attention due to dreamhack). It would be cool to have a small segment for the newer breed who aren't nearly at the high level of play yet. Though this would probably piss your primary listener demographic off. Haha, anyway. Keep it up guys!
Simon, the thing I love about these guys is that you can really just learn things from listening to them even when you're new. You'll learn the meta-game, what champions are being considered OP, what plans RIOT has, etc. Good to see some new people finding this podcast!
ReplyDeleteHey AsheIsElite, I'd like to try to answer your question. Hopefully the reason that someone is in the jungle is obvious and the reason 2 are bottom instead of top is dragon. The reason 2 aren't middle is a little more subtle. Middle has a very short distance between the towers. AD carries are the ones who need babysitting (and thus 2 heroes in the lane). AD carries deal damage over time not burst. So they'll have a much better chance of getting kills bottom than middle due to the longer ranges. Also, having 2 bottom means 1 hero can compete for the brush space while the other farms. The brush space in mid is for ganking and not really useful for laning.
ReplyDeleteI haven't actually finished this episode of the podcast yet, but you guys were talking about the fundamental difference between AP and AD. I wanted to chime in. Obviously, you'd want a split of physical and magic damage so your opponent's can't easily counter your damage. AP/AD, but there are extremely important but subtle differences between AP/AD that come out of the fact that AP are burst and AD are damage over time.
ReplyDeleteIf you are sieging, your AP are focused on killing the defenders since they can't really hurt the tower, while the AD should be doing what damage to the tower they can (and your tank on taking the tower shots). Not to say the AD shouldn't help you kill champs, but their primary job is damage to the tower.
When you're being sieged is when the AD really shine. AP are worse at defending a siege. The AD are better at killing off the minion waves. They do damage over time which is what you want in a siege cause they take a lot of time. The AP... well they dance around poking whoever they can and generally being menacing so that the heroes know not to get too close to the tower.
This is part of why Anivia/Malz were such good AP picks in the tournament. They both have great ability to defend against sieges despite being AP champs (it certainly helps that they have excellent damage and they both have CC + a good Anivia wall wins teamfights). A single Anivia can probably defend against an entire enemy team not too keen on tanking the tower. Since she can destroy all their creeps and be menacing to the champs as well (and with egg up they probably don't want to take out 2 healthbars of Anivia while the tower pummels them).
There are other subtle differences. AD are better at dragon/baron and they more often have some way to chase, escape, and/or kite (since these types of fights take longer).
I do feel like AP have the advantage because of their better ability to kill heroes (since, if all the champs are dead, they're all freaking dead... towers now fall like a toilet paper castle). And this is such a game of seconds.
While I'm a bit sad to see a deathcap nerf... it needs a nerf. It should be the cap... the last AP item you get (or at least one you get later). Now people rush it first since it's the most cost efficient item to get AP (even if used alone). That said, nerfing the % is probably the wrong way to do that. Nerf the flat number. You want the % to be high so it's useful once you already have some AP items under your belt (though it probably needs a bit of a nerf to both).
I do understand all of those aspects, but I still don't really understand it completely. It just seems like overall there will be more space control ( for both teams) and even safer objective-wise to do it with the 2 mid and 1 bot. I'm not sure exactly how long the meta game has been support/AD carry bot, or when it shifted. Only been playing since around December maybe January. Heck, maybe it's always been like that.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, it does make sense, but I just think having the two people middle for better overall map control would be more... interesting?
I do see that there could be big problems if the solo lane has to go further away from a tower, obviously it's easier to get ganked.
Suppose I'll just have to accept the fact that people care more about not getting ganked tan the red and blue buffs. Which, also makes sense. But then the other thing is, if the jungler is ganking bottom lane, top lane is clear of ganks for quite some time because of the longer distance, which allows them to do things they wouldn't normally try with a jungler that can gank at any time. Going from mid- top doesn't take long, but full on one end of the map to the other does.
Oh well.
Well in DotA the prevailing metagame for most of the time was 2 mid 2... somewhere and 1 in the left over lane. That 1 hero had to need all those creeps, but also be able to hold his own against 2 enemies most of the game cause he might find himself against 2 enemies. This would later change to 2 in the shorter lane (which, since the sides were mirrored, meant that 1 dude really really needed to be able to survive against 2). I believe this changed again but I probably quit playing by then.
ReplyDeleteAnd the argument for 2 mid was pretty good. 1 person could hold mid and the other dude could go out and gank every so often. Or, if they pushed out both enemies mid, then that tower was going to take good damage and getting a mid tower helped you more in getting map control because of its central location.
Those arguments would be true for League as well but it's pretty hard to beat the system they have now. In each lane you have a champ that gets all of the creeps. You have 1 support that doesn't really need gold. And you've got a guy roaming the jungle getting his share and buffs to gank with. It maximizes gold.
If you did have 2 mid, mid is easy to gank. Plus, it doesn't take long to get there either. If you did push the enemy out of your lane, the jungle could probably be there before the creeps no matter where he is. In DotA it took longer to get between lanes (and the whole jungler thing took a long time to catch on and was probably an accident).
Would having 2 mid in League be terrible? No. Is it better than the current meta? Maybe not. It does have advantages. The mid tower IS more important (even more important in League than DotA I would say). It does free mid to gank more (and thus you could put more pressure on top). You still have dragon control. And someone mid can be more easily fed buffs.
I think a lot of it comes down to is the lane is the easiest to farm, which is why you want to put your strongest carry in mid.
ReplyDeleteYeah mid is the easiest to farm lane, fastest to get back to, and safest lane. Throwing a duo there just wastes a spot perfectly suited to a solo.
ReplyDelete