pacov's League of Legends general discussion thread - strategies, etc

By pacov on November 29, 2011 1:07:18 PM from

OP updated 6/7/2012

Well, I started a thread back in August (http://forums.joeuser.com/411269/) that's seen a lot of activity and actually had quite a few good bits of information for new and old players alike. I figure it's time to start a new thread and perhaps keep the OP up-to-date with useful information, etc. Feel free to use this post for any LoL discussion, etc.

Super fast background: I played a lot of Demigod as pacov/cheesuscrust. Back in August 2011 or so, I started getting heavily involved in LoL and folks have been kind enough to chime in with tips and links to various sites that have been quite useful to me. In addition, I've been able to keep up with folks that I've played Demigod with in the past and meet some new folks that play LoL and frequent these message boards.

Here's some of the things I've learned in the previous thread:

Added 12/5/2011: For anyone that is level 30 with an account in good standing, you can participate in the tribunal. This is a system that was setup by riot to allow the community to police their own. In short, you get to review cases where players have been reported and recommend that a player is forgiven or punished for their behavior. Check it out here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/Tribunal
You can view players stats here: http://www.lolstatistics.com/ (thanks darkliath!) - this is a useful way to get info on your previous matches and to look up players if you like
You can often find some great live streams here: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/stream/ . Watching good players as they pug or play with teammates helps me learn the best. I highly recommended firing up some of these streams and watching some of the top players go at it. Great learning tool.
You can save your replays and view them whenever you like or upload them. Go here to get the necessary software: http://www.leaguereplays.com/download/ and then go here for more info on how it works: http://leagueofreplays.com/faq.php . Took me about 3 minutes to figure out and setup. Very simple and then you always have a small replay file (2-5 megs) including all the details from your game (items/kills, etc - and you even see all of the in game chat). This also makes it MUCH easier to go back and watch how another person plays if they did a great job or figure out where you messed up and then improve.
Sites that are great for player build guides, etc: www.solomid.net and www.mobafire.com
An excellent site with guides and up-to-date info on one of the better competative teams, CLG: www.clgaming.net
Folks from DG that play LoL - pacov, zex, zen_god, jona, thundercles, hedgie, trouser, orcun, mith, misterhankey, morpheas, mcshane, darkliath - probably quite a few more that I can't think of at the moment
Added 12/5/2011: You can get a free unchained alistar skin - this also gives you the character for free as well. See here: http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/45610/t1685348-free-unchained-alistar-skin/
Added 06/7/2012: You can get the riot girl Tristana skin for free by following Riot's youtube channel. This also unlocks the character for you.

New Player tips

Play the tutorial. Seriously. Play the tutorial.
Riot gives you some RP after you play your first game or so. It's enough to buy some skins, a boost, or a cheap character. You'll typically notice this a little after you play your first game.
Learn to last hit! Last hitting is simply landing the last hit on creeps. If you last hit, you get gold for that kill. You will need to learn when you should push a lane and when you should just last hit (this means DO NOT attack the creep wave, just let the creeps fight each other and then snag a last hit whenever possible) - the number of creeps you have killed is tracked in a value called CS. You can see that number at any time by pressing tab
Added 06/07/2012 - Sometimes its good to do some damage on a tower. Sometimes not so much. Understanding the difference is huge. For instance, if you manage to kill one or two of the enemies and there is no one in the lane, consider pushing your creep wave to the tower and retreating. Any creep that dies to the tower is experience and gold that you have denied the enemy. Doing this right gives you an advantage and ensures the creeps are in a good spot when you come back from the shop.
Read some guides on any character you want to try out. The recommended builds (what you see when you go to a shop) are not optimal. The guides include item suggestions and skill orders. These are very useful in learning decent ways to build characters
Added 12/5/2011: So, you know you can't get level 3 runes until you hit level 20? Well, guess what - that's not entirely true. Hedgie came up with a way to get level 3 runes at any point. The bad news, its random. Here's what you do. You will need 375 IP. Buy any tier 1 rune that costs 15 IP. You need to purchase 25 of these. Click on your rune page. In the bottom right hand corner there is a button called the Rune Combiner. If you place 5 runes in there, you can get a random rune that is 1 tier higher (eg if you have 5 tier 1 runes, you will get 1 random tier 2 rune. Anyway, the math works out such that you spend 375 IP ( buy 25 tier 1 15 IP runes) and you get 1 completely random tier 3 rune. Some of the quintessences are 2k IP, so if you luck out and get one of those, you just won the lottery. Anyway, its not the best system as its completely random, but it does work and does give you a chance to get tier 3 runes at any time. Another thing to consider, you can always keep the random tier 2 rune if it happens you ended up with a good deal or got something you need. Going that route, you spend 375 IP and would have 5 random tier 2 runes. That's fairly cost effective for 375 IP.
Added 12/5/2011: Consider saving IP for when you hit level 30. Having tier 3 runes is a reasonable advantage. If you don't save now, I guarantee you are going to be a little sorry when you hit level 30 and spend all your time slowly unlocking runes.

If you can think of anything else that would be good to add to the OP, let me know. Thanks!

Great site I visit every day for LoL related news - http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends

+171 Karma | 1362 Replies

Epic Kass kills...

Went solo bot as Kassadin in my last PvP game versus a Twitch and an Annie.

I love how I can lane 2v1 with Kass and hide until I hit level 6...

Then I snipe someone and the other person runs away...

Their Twitch was fail, he just let me hit him with Null Spheres until he died out of lack of health at lv. 3...

I chased both of them out of bot when I hit level 6 and killed Annie.

The rest of the game revolved around tons of damage, me killing people left and right and getting owned by Twitch more than once, who seemed to harbor a special resentment for the early kill.

I died once early game, but by then I was too fed to care, and I finally died 3 more times later in the game inside of their base...

Final results: 7/4/5

I just killed and killed and killed and killed and hurt people 'til we won.

LoL Replays aren't working... I dunno why.

So - had enough IP and unlocked urgot. Holy crap. All of the following games were solo queued (marking my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd games as urgot).

12/0/8 Mid lane urgot - lrf://www/replays/49562/download/49562.lrf
14/4/9 Mid lane urgot - lrf://www/replays/49614/download/49614.lrf
18/5/16 Top lane + 1 (no jungle) - lrf://www/replays/49668/download/49668.lrf

Anyway, here's what I've seen the past few days.

I suck with many characters. I appear to be op with kart (even if I miss my ult, I seem to dominate really well as long as I'm mid). Always > 65% k/d ratio
I appear to be really good with urgot (or at least be able to out play folks at mid). If I land that poison cloud twice I will kill mid one way or another).
I seem to stay VERY positive K/D ratio with those 2.

With gragas I could guarantee I wouldn't feed any lane and could hold my lane 100% with no tp. That was ok for ap. And I could, if having a great game, be a pimp with my ult and catch one dumb player and drive them to the team. In short, before, I'd say grag was my best. Now, I'm leaning towards kart being my best. I think I'm like at 13/14 with him as of today or some such rot. With urgot, I'm 100% so far (only 3-4 games), so it could be a fluke, but I'm doing exceptionally well with him. With kart, I've got a long range way (with pretty decent map awareness (I'm checking all the time)) to catch up and stay positive in k/d. With urgot, its just in fights - and I've been very successful. Anyway, I expect I'll keep playing him for a bit and see how that goes.

Right on man, welcome to the Urgot fan club! Gonna check out your replays and steal some ideas if you don't mind.

Of course... I do have a couple of warnings for you.

I'll start out with something I heard one time about bears. If you go out walking in grizzly country, bring two dogs not one. If you get attacked by a bear and have one dog its just gonna run away and that leaves you as the slowest of the three animals. not good. But, if you have two dogs, hopefully the pack mentality kicks in and if the bear goes after one, the other dog snaps at it and barks to get its attention. When it turns around the other dog takes over and so it goes until the bear leaves y'all alone.

Don't know if theres any truth to that, but when I play Urgot as AD bot with a 0 CS Support I feel like that god damned bear. Mid can obviously be fantastic since its where he's meant to lane, especially if the matchup is good. I remember one of the more detailed Teemo guides I read that describes some laning adversaries. Under Urgot it said "Go to another lane if you can. If you can't, surrender at 20." Leblanc on the other hand can be tough as she's another early ripe early rot champ, but as long as you temper your laning expectations with match ups like that you should come out well. As far as top 2v1 goes? Oh man... I would love that situation so much if I ever had a lane partner who knew about the concept of zoning.

Do any of you play the Dominion mode?

Steven - I don't. I gave it a go awhile back but just really didn't like it as much as I'd hoped I would. I'm sure I'd play it again, but I doubt its something I'd like to do on a regular basis.

re: Karth - he seems exceptionally strong mid lane. Its incredibly easy to get cs and be safe and even throw in some harass - all while being highly mana efficient.

urgots just alot of fun. Love seeing someone trying to get as far away from me as possible after you land the cloud. On a smart team, you could kite an urgot pretty easily at mid, though (eg the guy at mid lets you hit them with gas cloud - then runs back pulling you closer to their turret while you chase). If a jungler popped in right then, he'd e able to unload some decent damage on urgot. Anyway, theorycrafting done.

Urgot is squishy if you can catch him unawares...

I had a recent game against an Urgot...

He played solobot versus me (Cho'Gath) and a noob Miss Fortune...

Obviously I am playing on a far lower level than any of you, so it isn't as applicable or impressive, but he was solo laning nicely, killing our Miss Fortune and getting fed and stuff.

It took 3v1 to root him out, and he nearly killed me when he swapped me towards his tower...

Ugh, good thing Cho'Gath functions well under pressure...

Also, I've found that grabbing an Urgot with multiple Ruptures early-game can cause an early kill, because he depends on his abilities to survive, and hitting him with things while he's in the air is very painful for him.

If I got close to Urgot, (which was harder than I thought while he dodged my Ruptures) I could Feast on him for a kill, as Feast took away over half of his health.

I imagine that the Urgot I was playing against was a noob, as everyone's a noob down here at the level 10 range, but I noticed several things about Urgot that are important. (at least to me... I dunno about anyone else)

1. he is a great harasser, dealing tons of damage from afar.

2. if anyone stuns him or gets close to him, he has a hard time escaping without teammate intervention.

3. Kassadin beats him in DPS, though it all depends on who is faster at clicking on stuff... (surprise teleport, null sphere, force pulse, nether blade, deathfire grasp, death.) Urgot dies rather consistently to Kassadin's nuke-yness, but Kassadin has a little trouble if Urgot is near other teammates.

4. Cho'Gath is a fun counter if they aren't paying attention to Ruptures...

5. Again, it seems that Urgot is a seriously good team player, and he NEEDS teammates to stay alive and deal out his "tons of damage."

6. Shaco and Urgot make a great team... (Shaco makes JiBs in a bush, Urgot swaps places and the JiBs kill the player) and apparently (according to a friend, a meh 1200 ELO jungle Shaco player) this is the only situation in which Shaco should (could) be laning...

And again, my brain has vomited out some more useless points onto a page.

Forgive my intrusion...

heh - a welcome intrusion.

Yeah - I've found urgot to be excellent in the laning phase of the game. As long as you are patient and maxing your q and e first, all you need to do is land 2 out of like 10 gas clouds and you can farm to your hearts content safely or go for kills. I'll see about posting a link to the guide I'm following for runes/items. It's actually the ONLY guide that I feel that they are spot on for item choices and the overall timing.

In team battles, his passive and his cloud ability (along with his ult) are all excellent. Reduces attack speed, gives armor penetration, and reduces armor/magic resist. Plus - if you tag someone with the cloud and they are trying to run away... well, target lock for 4 more hits and they are dead.

Anyway, if I do get to play some games tonight, I'm sure I'll be going urgot a bit more. I do wonder when that fox character is going to be released, though. It's called the "fox character" patch... you know, the one that went live a day or 2 ago... you'd think that it would include the "fox character." Anywho, I'm curious to see how she plays.

Oh - and the other day I had some fun games with misterhankey and thundercles. Happy to have been able to help hankey get some more wins. You can tell he's getting better..

Ahri looks like she is going to be deadly...

A "grab" that stops champs and doesn't require channeling?

A dash ult?

Seriously?

I think that she is going to be an amazing harasser...

Don't have much experience playing with Urgot, but have seen him be a very strong laner. I think his main weakness is that he needs to get in close to use his ult. His ult is also the closest thing he has to an escape mechanism. Most of his damage is single target as well, but with a successful early/mid game, he can take people out pretty quickly. Glad to hear you are having success with him. Are you building manamune on him?

I'm not looking forward to playing against Ahri with all those dashes...They have really overdone dashes in the newer champs. I feel like they should either nerf the distances on them or buff slows slightly. Playing squishies is getting more and more difficult even when you land a big slow on them.

Quoting AragornV,

reply 84

Are you building manamune on him?

Yup - that's a big part of the build.

I think the playstyle is very important. For instance, I don't really lead with his ult ever unless there's a big need to suppress a strong carry. I try to wait a little bit before casting it. Initiating with it is usually not a good idea (as it would flip you right into the enemy in most cases. I don't think I've ever had to use it as an escape, though. What I typically do is try to keep just a small distance between all the folks fighting (a bit like an ap carry), spam whatever dmg I can, move in and out of the battle as needed, and then use my ult to suppress and swap anyone that thinks they are going to run or anyone doing crazy damage to the team to buy my teammates a moment. Anyway, its been pretty successful. Who knows, though, perhaps I'll be crap today.

edit - regarding the fox lady - I have no idea if she'll be good or not. Really looking forward to the video showing her abilities, etc, to get a feel for her. The tips on her (you can few her stats/abilities/tips in the lol launcher thing) indicate that's pretty squishy and likely easy to kill if her ult is down... makes it sound like she'll be good to chase, etc, but perhaps be slow when running without her ult... hard to say.

Demigod was just released on steam. Good stuff. Might see a nice population spike.

well another win as urgot - less pretty this time (was bot) - 17/9/9. Still ok k/d ratio i guess..

LOL appears to be down for me. calling it a night

in da code with latest patch... hmm

When Shen goes right, it's a beautiful thing...

No kidding - look at you as mr super tank - 0 deaths and all. Nice

Well, I did manage to lose a few with urgot yesterday. sooo not my fault though Did my part in both games anyway, though I was stuck bot for one of them and, while i harassed like a champ, I was pretty awful with CS for a bit. tis a bit easier when you are laned with a support... and one that isn't taking cs, to be sure.

One thing I really like about urgot is the way he can do his targeting and AA. I know, he's got his super range lock on blah blah, but that's not exactly what I mean. If I'm working on tearing down a tower, I can use the gas cloud on some creeps in the back, then start AAing the tower, then fire a long range shot at the creeps, then aa the tower. You don't even have to reclick on the tower to continue AAing either. He just stays on it, so I can take out the creeps easily and keep pounding on the tower at the same time. I feel like I should maybe add in the bonus 10 dmg to towers bit to increase the effectiveness. As it is, though, he can drop a tower pretty fast with the build I'm using.

I'm still teetering on the edge about playing some Demigod. Not really sure if I want to invest some time in it again. AFAIK, there's no real patch planned for it and I don't think its incredibly likely that it will happen. I'm really pleased with the work that SD has put into things recently and how they've very quickly incorporated some of the stat changes I requested. They've even quickly responded by tweaking the duration of epoch's in pantheon a second time (as my requested 5k points was waaaayyy too low). But that said, I'm not sure that I want to put the time into it.

I love the game, but I don't find it super exciting atm. Sure, we've got a nice influx of people which is something the game definitely needed. But if I came back, things would likely be the same for quite some time. Either us "experts" would just play some more games at the exclusion of the new "noob" community (which isn't exactly welcoming and doesn't really do any good for the community outside of super competitive pro types) or we can pick up with new players, try to teach them the game and deal with stubborn elements in the community that would only be all too pleased to sit on a stacked team.

So, if I chose to do the thing for the community and try to build up some new players, there's no real competition for me. I either lose because of the inexperience of my teammates or end up stomping some team - or get stomped myself when some of the "pros" decide to stack a team to take out me and a couple of new players. None of those sound all that appealing. And that takes me back full circle to where things were when I quit playing - the thing I'd enjoy most would be playing in the expert level games. And I quit playing when that was still a possibility. Honestly, I think the only thing that would truly get me back into the game would the magical things that won't happen: new characters, new maps, and a patch. Anyway, I'll stay on the fence for now.

Quoting pacov,

reply 92

Hmmm... from my experience with him I disagree. Urgot isn't a farmer and thats what the whole point of bottom lane 0 CS support right? As far as farming up AD carries I haven't found there much point in using one of the worst late game scaling ones yet, but maybe you have. My mission when I play him is to kill my enemy laner, clear the creeps quickly, then go top or bottom to gank which he's excellent at past level 6. Failing that you send the enemy home and go gank. Or just zone the enemy and deny them farm. All of this is hard to do when you've got a second enemy laner disrupting your harassment then healing the damage and taking over farming while the guy you were targeting recharges.

Hopefully this part doesn't come across as jealous or anything, I was just kidding about that message I sent when I saw you were playing him ranked. My new love affair is with Yorick... 14/2/? in a game we won where our jungler was AFK for 20+ minutes. Anyway, beware of measuring how you do against people who aren't familiar with Urgot. I've had a 500+ win Leblanc rage quit on me after accusing me of hacking when I fired 4 acid hunter salvos on one Noxious Charge. There was a 300+ win Morgana I killed over and over who kept trying to spell shield Acid Hunters when I was only level 20. I remember I had to defend an Ezreal who was way underleveled and underfarmed even though I hardly got any kills on him to his team and explain that he had no chance against me and they should have given him some more jungle support at the very least when I was zoning him.

I'm not bragging because I'm really not a very good Urgot player, I'm just making the point that neither were they. Even if an opposing player understands what Urgot does, he might not know it well enough not to think the bushes are going to shield him from homing Acid Hunters when he's panicked y'know?

@Demigod Players

Ever have a horrible ex that made you miserable while you were together? But when you think of them during those lonely times after the breakup, you think of the few things that worked between you and the fun times you had? Then you remember the absolute frustration and misery that would accompany that? You'd think that maybe if things were a little different then maybe...

Well for me Demigod is that ex girlfriend and nothing has changed and nothing will change and if we get back together it would probably just be worse than before. No thanks.

Urgot suffers meta problem. He doesn't scale well into the late game and is range isnt great in teamfights, so you dont want him as your teams primary AD carry. That means he can't bot. He doesnt have the durability, escapes, or sustain to be a good top. And he doesnt jungle well. That means he pretty much needs mid lane. And where are you going to put your AP Carry if you can't put them mid?

So he works very well mid if you can do something like jungle fid or Sion top, but the rest of the time its just hard to work him in.

Basically he works really well in random normal games where everybody just takes whever they want. But in higher ELO ranked games where teams actually try and optimize their lineups, he just rarely has a spot to fill. People generally get kind of annoyed if you take him in rank because he really doesnt make a mess of laning assignments for the rest of the time usually.

@Krazi

Thanks for saying that! I thought maybe I was just not doing it right on the bottom and top...

It was nice playing him pre level 30 cause you'd occasionally have an AP who was scared of taking mid and then I'd get to play him. But yeah nowadays, not many good opportunities to make full use of my crabby friend but I'm hoping somehow that some more AP top/bots/junglers sneak into the meta someday.

Quoting Krazikarl,

reply 94

See... I don't know about all that. I do agree 100% about him being useful in normals, though. I can't truly disagree re: ranked, but I don't know. Honestly, if all you are doing in any lane with any character is harass, then I mostly disapprove of the play style. Don't get me wrong - he's amazing at harass. The difference is that he can harass better than anyone and maintain a good CS as long as you are disciplined if you are bot. And, at least from my normals, he's not going to lose a lane... and if, in ranked, you can count on your folks not to lose a lane, he's a great fit imo. The only games I've lost with him are where I've had some sort of weak player on my team (my worst loss stats are 5/3/4 and 3/5/2 (2 lanes folded on that one - mid and top). Barring that, every level 30 game I've played in normals has left me with up by at least 10 kills vs my deaths. That's a pretty substantial margin, especially considering I've been doing like 90% pugs lately. It honestly should translate fine, imo, into ranked matches (considering I've got no other character (except karth, perhaps) that has like an 80% ratio of kills vs deaths. If I can't fit a character like that into a ranked match against a "balanced" team, then perhaps the "perfect" combo isn't so perfect. He's a character that wins like 90% of 1v1s even if its a tank he's up against... in a group... late game...

Other stuff... I played 1 game on an alt account tonight in Demigod. I had 2 noobs against 3 mid level players (not exceptional mids at that, but mids)... omg - super frustrating. And, what I thought would happen is happening - due to the stat reset, more experienced players are trying to work over new players... or at least that happened in the one game I played. Anyway, I had teammates not realizing they should take flags, mad lag most of the game (drawing out a real time game of 25 minutes to like 45 minutes), teammates with no understanding of good builds/playstyles... sigh - I don't think, at least now, that I have any real interest in playing more dg. After all of the games of LoL, it just seems so dumbed down to me. In DG, I became good by calculating the dg output down to like 10 hp or every ability used on me and against me... I figured out how to time best abilities, fake tps, calculate the remaining HP after a sigil, etc... in short, I figured out every possible bit that I could. Now that I look at it, I feel like there is not enough going on at way too slow a pace. Even if it was a magical, lag free world, I don't think I'd enjoy it as much as LoL now due to the added nuances. If anything, I'd love it if LoL took a page from Demigod and add citadel upgrades and gave folks a chance to gimp themselves to better the team... maybe anyway. Oh well - all of that said, I'm going to keep trying to help out new players on the forums and do what I can to support DG, but right now I don't think I'm going back... I don't have any desire at this point to play another game. Sad - but true.

Other (more real) sad news, my wife's Grandfather might be about to die. I don't know him super well, but he's a great guy and WWII vet. She's really torn up about it, so its highly probably I'll be MIA for a bit helping there as I can, going to funerals, etc.

My best wishes for you in this time.

Pacov- Sorry to hear about your wife's Grandfather. I send a little extra holiday cheer your way.

Has anyone tried out any of the new runes? I'm not sure they fit any of the champs I've been playing lately (Lux, Renekton, Kog Maw)

Also, I have to admit, this is the first new champ release where I've been really impressed by the artwork. Even in the champion spotlight I was thinking this would be a champ I might buy just to see her in action.

Thanks for the kind words, fellas.

re: the runes, I haven't picked up or tried any of them yet.

I did pick up the fox lady. I only played 1 game with her against the AI. Now, beating the AI is no big deal, but I was tearing through the AI, winning 3v1's, even with a barebones kit. That said, she really feels squishy, so I think it will take some time to figure out the best way to use her. She doesn't really feel like a mage, per se. Its a bit hard to describe. She was fun to play. I didn't venture into vs human games with her, though, as I still don't really feel like a have her figured out well enough that I wouldn't feed a bit. Fun to play as though.

Guardsman Bob's stream is decidedly fun to watch...

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/

He's good at everything I've seen so far:

Gangplank

Jungle Udyr

Jungle Ahri (What? That's right, he played Jungle Ahri... and he owned.)

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pacov's League of Legends general discussion thread - strategies, etc