Pacov's place to enjoy the show.

I've locked/archived this thread/blog and have started a new discussion over here:  http://forums.demigodthegame.com/454943/

Please join me if you like.

 

 

 


 

 

Am I streaming


 

 

Well, I started a thread  back in August (https://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:

 New Player tips

  • Play the tutorial.
  • Consider picking up the starter bundle.  It's 530 RP (that's about $4).  You get 8 champs unlocked, a 4 win IP boost and a 10 win XP boost.  It's a pretty good deal (used it recently on an alt account).  You can find it in the game store under bundles.
  • Riot gives you 400 RP as soon as you hit level 5.  It's enough to buy some skins, a boost, or a cheap character. 
  • Learn to last hit!  Last hitting is simply landing the last hit on creeps.  If you last hit, you get gold for that kill.  The number of creeps you have killed is tracked in a value called CS.  You can see this number in the top right hand corner of the ui or by pressing tab.  Here's a really simple tutorial re: last hitting if you are brand new - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LheiRB76x5g
  • 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
  • Use the rune combiner to get level 3 runes prior to level 20 if you like.  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.  You can always keep the random tier 2 rune if you end up with something good and don't want to trade it out yet.
  • Consider setting aside IP for tier 3 runes (available at level 20 and above).  You can't purchase them with real money - only IP.  Keep that in mind.

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

pacov's misc info

Here's a guide I made

pacov's Guide to Improving at League of Legends and Moving Up in Elo

k - so I'm just going to put down some of my thoughts.  I'm not amazing at this game, but I do certain things that improve my odds of winning in ranked and so far its panning out just fine (bronze 5 to gold 5 in about a month or so).  We all have varied skill levels, so some of this might be useful and some not.  Caveat complete.

Prerequisite- you need to know how to play every single role.  You don't have to be a god at every single role (more power to you if you are - I'm certainly not).  You need to be able to play at a serviceable level in every single role and excel at least at 1 role (preferably 2).  In my case, I'm good at support and adc.  I'm not great, but have serviceable mids and jungles and so so tops.  Knowing what you are good at and bad at is very important.  If you don't know, I can probably tell you - but you really should know...  Anyway, you need to have enough champs to make solid picks in any role and you need to be able to cover any role if it comes down to it.  I'll talk about how to get better at specific roles in a bit.

Champ select advice - Don't be the "fill" guy unless you really feel like you are awesome in all roles.  Call your preferred role immediately when you hit the lobby.  Say "adc pref."  Do this as soon as you hit the lobby.  Some people believe that if you call a role you magically get it.  This is stupid, but if you call something out, folks will often accomodate your request.  If you are feeling wishy washy for whatever reason, call out multiple roles in order of what you want to play - "adc/mid pref."  In my experience, you generally do not want to call support.  It's a very important role, but you want to be in a position to carry every single game if possible.  If you aren't calling out a role, you are hoping that other players can carry you.  If you are hoping that folks will carry you, you don't deserve to win.  You need to know your best roles and you absolutely should request them.

Solo or duo in ranked? - Well, my 1st thought here is that you should solo.  If you solo, you have to rely on yourself.  IMO - its a much bigger test of skill to play solo and win than to duo.  Do you want someone to carry you or do you really want to know that you are actually good?  That said, provided you have the right duo partner, you can increase your odds of winning quite a bit.  The simple math is that instead of having 4 teammates as unknown quantities, you only have 3.  If you have a good duo teammate, you know what you can expect.  When you duo, you get the most bang for your buck by having complimentary roles.  Support/adc is good; jungle/mid also works.  Even if you don't have direct symmetry in roles, if you are an amazing mid and I'm an amazing adc, our odds go up quite a bit if we both get those roles.  Our odds go way down if we can't get those roles and are forced to play out of positions that we are weaker.  For example, Bryff is a good mid.  If he duo's up with me, the only way he will get to play that role is for me to call mid, take it myself, and then put myself into a position like support where I can't carry out of (I'm always 1st pick, Bryff is always last pick when we duo)... that and I have to show the mid I'm picking at the start which means Bryff gets hard countered.  In short, we can expect that we will be a disadvantage when duo queuing.  Now, if Bryff queued up with someone at a lower elo than himself that was solid, he'd likely be 1st pick and be able to get mid and have a better chance of carrying the game.  Anyway, you need to keep in mind where you end up in pick order when duoing if you aren't looking to go adc/support.  If you want that, you can usually get it. 

How do you get better in roles that you are not good at? - Well, here's what I do.  And this is really what I do on a regular basis.  I think about what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.  For instance, I realized that I don't play any hyper carry ads.  So, I read up on hyper carries like vayne and kog maw.  I look for guides on how to build them (most adcs are the same btw ), I look for vids on how people play them (eg how do I all in with a specific champ - is there a combo - when do I all in - what's the best way for me to burst - how should I behave in lane with this champ).  Then, I fire up a custom game and try out the mechanics of whatever champ vs AI.  Usually I learn a few tricks during that custom on how to position myself, etc.  Then, I'm off to normal games where I'll request the role or character I'm trying out.  Now, people still report your for being awful in normals, but it really is where you need to try out characters to see if you are any good or not as the bots are useless for proving your skill level to yourself.  So, fire up that normal and ask to play a role (again - after you've tried out the champ against bots).  If you don't know anyone you are with and you are quite awful, I suggest muting everyone at the start of the game.  Then, do your best.  Continue with this until you feel like you have a serviceable skill level in whatever role.  And keep in mind what you need to work on.  For me, I noticed I didn't really have alot of mids for ranked, so I started practicing some with gragas against and karth.  That way, I'll be able to get the job done if I need to play mid.  The next thing I need to do is put more time into being better top lane. Again, because while I prefer adc/support, I might need to play top for the team.  So, best to be ready for it.  Put your time in and practice roles. 

One last thought - there are certain things you can generally expect in ranked.  1 - if you are 1st pick, you generally can call whatever you want.  Common knowledge, I'm sure - but I'll add - CALL WHATEVER YOU WANT.  2 - if you duo queue, you generally can lock down both adc and support.  It works best if your adc is 1st pick, ofc.  I've bumped into like 10 random dedicated supports in all of my games of LoL.  People generally aren't going to call support. So, if you are 1st pick and duo'd, just call adc and then your duo partner can almost always get support.

 

Lol King profiles for ranked tracking

I'm not going to update this regularly, so just consider it a snapshot (I'll add a date when I update them).  Anyway, I enjoy seeing folks progress through ranked and keeping tabs on that sort of thing from time to time. 

Snapshot updated 05/28/2014

 Character guides

Mid Ziggs by cow - http://www.lolking.net/guides/7906

Comments (Page 2)
334 Pages1 2 3 4  Last
on Nov 30, 2011

Playing with it some (no EXP quints, still only level 26 not full runes blah blah):

Wolves > Blue > Wraiths > Red > Golem > Wraiths > Wolves > Wraiths > Golems > Wraiths > Wolves > B > Blue (give to mid) 

gets you level 6 at 7:30 minutes, going Cloth + 3 pots (saving 70 gold for later on). 

 

Note that is the "exact" same amount of time it takes for the old jungle clear (to get to 6). HOWEVER, you used to have time for 2 ganks. With the above route it is pure 100% farming. And I'm literally killing the camps "as they spawn". 

Ideally, you'd want to swing back to bot and re-pick up red and clear wraiths/golems, which leaves you 3 EXP short of level 8, at 8:30. With Boots + Madreds + Ward. (which would be a good time to go gank bottom and get dragon if you're purple). For this reason alone (and the full clear gives you 2 EXP short of 4 before), all junglers will probably want to run 1 EXP quint or Awareness. 

Note this is not on a leash (a leash would have sped me up by a good amount because I had to wait for blue to respawn for about 5 seconds), and I kill wolves at 1:53 and then face-pulling blue at 1:58. 

 

That a pretty substantial nerf. Although the leveling pace wasn't nerfed if "all I do is farm for the first 7 minutes of the game", if I decide to do something "other than farm" then it hurts you a lot unless you get a kill. 

Before you could get a level 4 gank in a 3:40 without slowing down at all. 

 

Junglers are going to have less gold, less levels. Which does give junglers more incentive to go down the Support tree for Greed, perhaps. The EXP per kill/assist would be good as well. I think that the defense tree might also be more appealing. You're going to be lower level, so rather than focusing on increasing your nerfed damage output thru offense tree, you might as well absorb more damage in team fights by going down defense. And, again, gold per kill/assist mastery (though Initiatior beats that one imo).  

 

Finally, the normal route + wraiths actually leaves you 2 EXP short of level 4. So it's "level 3.98 at 4 minutes for mid gank". 

 

Starting at red gets you to level 2 instantly, unlike before (it left you a bit less to prevent red-powered early ganks). 

 

Golems > Red > Wraith > Wolves gives you a red-buff level 3 gank at 3:00. However, you're low on mana and it requires 4 pots to gank at full hp. 

on Nov 30, 2011
 

Hey folks,

After letting the jungle settle for a day and not only reading the feedback on the forums, but watching streamers, discussing with high-level players, and running some additional internal testing and mathcraft, we will be making changes to the jungle, likely tomorrow. 

What will be the scope of these changes, and what are we trying to fix?

* XP Rate: This isn't as smoothed out as we'd liked (or was intended) and has been the most noticeable problem in the new jungle. While we do think this is not as drastically far off as some believe, it is lower than intended. We'll likely make updates here, especially relating to small camps. 

* Penalty of missed ganks: While we do like this tradeoff, we don't like the tradeoff ratio here, something you guys have also felt pretty substantially. Changes made will effect this for the better, whether in increased reward or reduced resource loss.

* Gold Rate: Jungler gold is slightly lower than needed, and this is also related to small camp gold. We will be more careful here as to not make counter-jungling worse (since it revolves largely on stealing the big monsters out of camps), but will be evaluating this.

Classick, Guinsoo and I will be doing some final proposals and mathcraft in the morning, in hopes to release it in a hotfix. I'll try to provide status updates as we get more information. Details to come.

So, it looks like they're going to try and fix some of the issues pretty quick... hotfixing as I'm typing this

on Nov 30, 2011

Thundercles
So, it looks like they're going to try and fix some of the issues pretty quick... hotfixing as I'm typing this

Sounds like they are mostly putting this back as it was... idk.  Anyway, after jungling a it yesterday, I'm not really a huge been of it as is.  I've been playing nunu a bit and there's a huge focus with him on counter jungling.  It's a pretty rough nerf so that stealing a wraith means pretty much nothing and I'm not getting as much xp to make up for the time roaming their jungle and warding. 

One cool thing that cow noticed - double golums can be killed by anyone at the start of the game for bonus XP.  They will respawn by the time your jungler gets there, so its no impact to him.  I watched, and sure enough, they were back very quickly. 

on Nov 30, 2011

Master Yi can be a jungler, correct?

He's free this week, so I might try it out...

 

So far all of my strategies revolve around laning, and I feel that I have a fairly good grasp of it...

 

Is jungling/ganking an 'advanced' technique? Or is it just an alternative strategy to running a lane?

How does one know when to gank and who to gank after leveling a bit?

on Nov 30, 2011

yup - yi can be a jungler

Jungling is a bit more tricky - its almost like a game in and of itself.  1st - it requires a great amount of map awareness.  You need to have an eye on where you team needs you to help out (for instance, if your guy at mid is getting worked over, you can cover for him while he goes to base - its basically your job to be wherever you are needed and you only know this if you have good map awareness).  Then you also need to know when you should try to gank and when you should stay back. I'm constantly looking over the health of the enemies in the lane along with my teammates health while I'm in the jungle.  Are the creeps pushed really close to the enemy tower or is the enemy closer to our tower... if they are closer to our tower, sounds like a gank op.  If not, then I'll probably just move along in the jungle.

Then there's basic health management.  Takes a little bit to learn how much each jungle creep will hurt you.  It's important to keep a good amount of health so you can go out and gank AND so you can avoid being counter jungled.

And last, there is the counter jungling game.  This is basically trying to keep tabs on where the enemy jungler is by using wards and having a support character use cv to help you track them.  If you know where they are, you can set an ambush to kill them and safely steal from their jungle. 

It's fun, but it takes quite a bit of time to get good at.  I only consider myself mediocre as is.  The best way to learn is to watch some videos on counter jungling and some videos of suggested jungle routes. 

Oh - and last tip - if you are going for a gank, I'd recommend pinging your target in advance so your teammates know 100% for sure that you are getting ready to gank and engage as well.  You'd be surprised at how often you can go in for a gank and your teammate is standing back by a tower completely oblivious to your presence. 

on Nov 30, 2011

I went 6-1-6 with Amumu in the new jungle, despite having an absolutely garbage team that couldn't hold their lanes worth anything. I kind of like the new set up, particularly for champs that were susceptible to counter jungling. I got Amumu to lvl 6 fairly quickly and although it's a lot harder to do an early gank with him, taking less dmg health/mana to kill creeps helped. The consensus seems to be that Nocturne is the new king of the jungle and his ult gives him a ton of gank potential from wherever he is clearing jungle. 

on Nov 30, 2011

yeah - that's a good point re: his ult anyway - was kind of like that before the changes, but now that you need to stay in the jungle longer...

Anyway, I'm about done putting thought into changing up strategies re: the jungle until after we see what they tweak in their "hotfix."  Got to admit, they are being a little bit ballsy with all the changes all at once.  Gotta figure there will be some missteps.  I went like 6/1/5 or something in a recent game as well as jungle, but I was way behind on levels. 

on Nov 30, 2011

Oops... guess last nights server downtime wasn't the hotfix after all.  My bad.

on Nov 30, 2011

The jungle isnt really any worse than before, its just much much more boring.

 In general, the "correct" strategy is now to farm.  Dont risk losing gold and xp by ganking.  You just can't open gank windows where you dont lose gold and xp except with very specific champions.  So you just stay in jungle til level 6 or 7 now.

Its pretty effective, especially on champs that have weak early games but strong late games (Irelia, Akali, Nasus...).  But its also boring as hell.  I dont really play LoL to have to PvE for 10-15 minutes as the start of every game. 

on Nov 30, 2011

Sigh my favorite role ruined . Guess I'll only jungle Phoenix Udyr now since Shaco would be to risky.

on Nov 30, 2011

Krazikarl
The jungle isnt really any worse than before, its just much much more boring. 

 

And it will remain boring... until Thursday.  Hotfix coming.

 

I like what I think they're trying to do, I think they just went too far.  They realize that, and are bringing things back in line to balance it out.

 

Its a good concept I think.   No more windows where you have nothing to do but try for a gank cause your jungle is clear.  You should give up something to try for a gank I think... right now you give up too much, but they apparently realize that and are balancing things out.

on Nov 30, 2011

Carbon was full of fail tonight.

on Nov 30, 2011

Carbon was fun to play with tonight.  We got 2 wins out of 2 games (I think it was 2 games anyway ).  We were crap together in the lane on our last game though.  But once we split off it was happy kill win time.  I never really play blitz, but I have to say, his ult going off every 18 seconds is very nice.  Super fast lane clearing at the very least.  I was so bummed with myself though - not a single awesome grab the whole game.  I was like super close over and over but always just missing what would have been amazing ganks.  boo.  Oh well - guess that's bound to happen if you aren't used to him.  Bigger bummer that i was actually being super patient for those shots. 

Me = crazy idea that probably doesn't work, but worth asking.  What happens if you use your grab and then flash while you stil have them grabbed?  they get pulled further back?

also - i saw that a patch went live, but there were no notes - any ideas what changed?  If you get a chance, post the notes if they release them - can't view em from work.

on Dec 01, 2011

Solo queue was an absolute nightmare last night! I don't think I've been more frustrated with this game...everyone is all over the place in terms of picks, jungling, laning pairs...well beyond normal. Maybe I just have to care less, but I do want to improve, which I can't at all when things are like they are right now.

 

-end rant

on Dec 01, 2011

Yeah I had a blast playing with someone. It be nice if I did well with you though

Ive been playing Blitz more often. He is fun to play. I tend to get more use out of waiting to use rocket grab at the end of picking a fight, when they try to disengage.  You have better chance of grabing them since they are too worried about running away.

Im really having some issues with Fizz. He is the bane of me it seems. I'll beat him sooner or later.

 

 

334 Pages1 2 3 4  Last