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[Maximus.]

So lame, a friend and I were playing some games, but our last game someone didn't make a pick so the game DC'd. However, my friend got stuck in the lobby and couldn't quit, so he closed the game and was greeted with the Quitter screen and now has to play with losers for a game.

I also find that like half the time, my mount doesn't register and I get the default one in the game

 

[Maledict]

Anyone have a link to the matches last night?

Which Kael build were people running? I tried the AA / trait build last night, and whilst it's clearly effective in the right circumstances I have to be honest - I loathe it as a playstyle. It doesn't feel like a Mage at all, and the notion that auto attacks should be the main source of his damage just feels dumb.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Naventic vs CoG game 3 was weird, So many times I felt like a Sundering could have secured a kill on Zuna holding 40+ gems but it never came. Glau also did dc at least twice.

Cog really could have won that series, disappointing.

 

[Maledict]

C9 always suffer when a new patch hits, I'm assuming that was amped to maximum given the patch hit the day before.

Really not good of Blizzard to do that. Glad to see other teams doing well though - the "only two good teams" in NA meta we've had for over a year has been really detrimental to the NA community I think. I do feel it's part of the reason we have the issues with NA pro's not actually playing the game.

 

[brian!]

Anyone have a link to the matches last night?

Which Kael build were people running? I tried the AA / trait build last night, and whilst it's clearly effective in the right circumstances I have to be honest - I loathe it as a playstyle. It doesn't feel like a Mage at all, and the notion that auto attacks should be the main source of his damage just feels dumb.

Yeah playstyle-wise it doesnt fit at all which is my main gripe with it. Only consistent aa talent was at 16 and that just as well might be in large part due to lack of choices

 

[Alavard]

I know this data only means so much, but I do find it funny that Gazlowe is sitting at 6th overall in HL winrate since this week's balance patch. Of course if you look at only Master, he's 3rd from the bottom

 

[kirblar]

I know this data only means so much, but I do find it funny that Gazlowe is sitting at 6th overall in HL winrate since this week's balance patch. Of course if you look at only Master, he's 3rd from the bottom

His archetype is a noobkiller.

 

[Alur]

That was a wonky tournament last night. New patch blues for some teams, perhaps, or maybe the gap really is closing? The only name team to not have a pretty good showing was Team Blaze, right?

I would pay actual money to see Tempo Storm catapult back into the top 2 or at least viably challenging for it. I feel like the scene in general is more interesting with them actually competitive for a spot.

Cognitive was once again a few bad decisions away from beating a top team...that decision to chase McIntyre on Sky Temple instead of go for the keep was ????

 

[brian!]

Yeah cog feels like they are going to forever stay at that point lol, really enjoyed the etc/mura comp they had though, didnt catch the other games.

Id attribute results to new patch but kudos to the ppl who made it through for adapting quickly and playing well, was a really nice showing in general and kind of makes me want more wacky tourney schenanigans from blizz

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

The whole game on Tomb was a mess in addition and Glau's thrall far from impressive. It's almost difficult to whiff a Sundering completely but he made a sport out of it.
I don't get it, they guarded the turn ins perfectly and then just didn't anymore, allowed NVT to get multiple turn ins in succession and failed to secure a single kill on a gem holder.
Other than that they played pretty great NVT didn't get a good teamfight for so long despite their comp being so much suited to it. The 3 person VP that almost turned into a loss for them, unbelievable.

Is Glau shotcaller? If he is they should try Cattlepillar calling shots for once.

 

[brian!]

Cattle calls, didnt catch the tomb game but usually there is a legit reason for backing off all of a sudden.

 

[Alur]

Cattle calls now? Didn't know that. I think Glaurung did last year, he was doing the draft for sure at one point.

 

[brian!]

Oh i thought cattle was in charge the whole time, i dont think theyd let glau shotcall

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Whoever does their drafting is pretty good at it though.

I was pretty tired but as far I can tell they weren't tapping, nor down a talent and it didn't seem like NVT was pushing particularly hard. It felt like they just thought they'd be quicker with their turn in.

Also they constantly blew multiple cooldowns including Blessed Shield to get Zuna but never used sundering to secure it. Jump was already used at the time but I may overestimate the reach of it.

 

[brian!]

Yeah i enjoy their drafts, i think it tripped up nvt a bit in the game i saw

 

[Maledict]

Still no uploads? I'm going to keep practising this stupid Kael build and would love to see how they play it. From my games last night it feels like he's now the most positioning dependant hero in the game - auto attack range Mage is a weird place to be!

 

[Alur]

Oh i thought cattle was in charge the whole time, i dont think theyd let glau shotcall

No clue, but Glau definitely was shotcaller at some point last year. If you recall, he was let go from Tempo Storm so Dreadnaught could take over as shotcaller. Part of the statement was that Glaurung needed his own team to lead, and then a similar statement was made once he joined Cog. He also regularly captained/shotcalled in SEL when they all got together.

It wouldn't surprise me if he wasn't doing it now, because...well, it just never really worked when he was in charge for any team. But then again, it's still not working. Still on the cusp but can't break through the glass ceiling.

EDIT: Cattle is listed as the team captain on Liquipedia. I wonder how long/if/etc Glaurung was in charge last year. Who would've been if he wasn't? Shot? Syracuse?

But Cattlepillar, who is the primary shotcaller for the new roster, explains that the team has managed to blend Glaurung's aggression with his own approach to teamfighting and the draft.

 

[brian!]

Yeah with cog i kind of remember that kind of statement when they formed w/ this iteration but i wasnt completely sure

@maledict try the twitch vods, i forget the guy who hosted but his name was like jwow or something, you can prob find the channel on reddit somehow. There was a secondary stream for one game by invernum (same guy who casts the aram tournament)

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Interesting they really need to get better at that, they are far from lacking in everything else to be contenders.
Team Captain doesn't mean anything though, Kayoh is TS' team captain, bakery is Dignitas' captain and neither shotcalls. As far as I can tell it just means face of the team or dude that stands in the middle in promo shots.

@Maledict https://www.twitch.tv/jhow4444/profile & https://www.twitch.tv/inverum/profile

 

[Alur]

I think normally it is the shotcaller, but you are correct, in those two scenarios it does not so it's not a one-for-one. I'm pretty sure Kaeyoh's "team captain" is more of a legacy thing than anything, honestly. Was kinda shocked that he was made captain because he always appears so quiet and meek.

Cattle's is for real at least, as is Zuna's.

 

[kirblar]

Oh i thought cattle was in charge the whole time, i dont think theyd let glau shotcall

Cog is Glau and his backup band.

 

[brian!]

I always felt like if cog were a family glau was annoying little brother

 

[Alur]

I think they felt that way too which is why they almost didn't bring him back, and nearly signed Equinox over him.

 

[Ketch]

Anyone have a link to the matches last night?

Which Kael build were people running? I tried the AA / trait build last night, and whilst it's clearly effective in the right circumstances I have to be honest - I loathe it as a playstyle. It doesn't feel like a Mage at all, and the notion that auto attacks should be the main source of his damage just feels dumb.

energy roil, gravity crush, pyromaniac, sun kings fury.

gotta land your Es and then go for the burst.

 

[brian!]

I think i saw the dmg amp on e at 4 once too
Oh nm thats what you meant, i think roil is the cdr one though

I saw backdraft too, very good talent atm

Oh actually nm what i saw was nether wind at 4, i got the talents confused, and yeah gravity crush at 7

 

[Maledict]

Watched the vids, and yeah. He was played 3 times in the main casted matches, and same build every time, with the one exception being Backdraft instead of Pyromanic in game 1.

Build was the 5% ability power at 1, the gravity stun cooldown at 4, the gravity damage at 7, phoenix, pyromaniac, Sun Kings fury, Master of flames.

 

[Ketch]

i think master of flames is crap though.


it's gotta be either phoenix upgrade or maybe arcane power, but I dont have mana issues with him anymore so it's whatever.

 

[brian!]

Yeah not too into master of flames, it needs help to work out and if it doesnt it's a waste of a slot, but it's also not like that tier is brimming with good choices either

There's a nice post on reddit about lili's ult change

 

[Ketch]

Yea his lvl 20s suck now, but I think Phoenix is the best one. +100% duration is pretty value.

 

[terencecah]

any good streamers to learn from?

 

[Milly79]

Grubby

 

[Ketch]

dreadnaught when he's not full rage mode.

mcintyre used to talk alot about his skill builds.... not so much recently though.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Personally like Cris from Team Liquid

 

[Alur]

Finally complete. Now I can play any hero again without feeling guilty about wasting EXP.

 

[RumblingRosco]

Finally complete. Now I can play any hero again without feeling guilty about wasting EXP.

I have one hero at 10 and one at 11. Three at 9. You're crazy bro! CRAZY! =O

By the way, anyone getting awful lag lately? It's so bad. Most games are fine then just randomly I get 2 second stutters constantly. My internet is totally fine for everything else, just HOTS. Getting to a point I am not sure I can play it at all anymore. Started about a week or so ago.

 

[Syf]

idk if I can do the 10 grind anymore, started off well and ambitious but then it took me like 2 months to get artanis to 10 and now I'm happy with everyone at 5 lol

congrats though

 

[Ketch]

chen is so good you guys.


QM stomper for sure.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Insane I have 2 11 and a couple 9s

 

[Ketch]

pro idling strats comin out from alur.

you guys need to understand that he didn't play those heroes to those levels. he's basically a chinese gold farmer.

 

[Milly79]

Rofl. The shots.

 

[kirblar]

pro idling strats comin out from alur.

you guys need to understand that he didn't play those heroes to those levels. he's basically a chinese gold farmer.

You're such a 土霸

 

[Alur]

pro idling strats comin out from alur.

you guys need to understand that he didn't play those heroes to those levels. he's basically a chinese gold farmer.

I don't know about gold farming, but he has a point. I only hit about 30-32 of them purely the old fashioned way. The rest sat somewhere between level 6 and 9 before being leveled via training mode (like reddit suggested people do RAF in the winter), as I said when I posted that I had finally gotten all the portraits like a month ago or whatever. If you count the heroes I've leveled the manual way on other accounts, I'm probably near the 50 threshold and actual legit completion, but heroes like Rexxar and Gazlowe and the like were finished in training mode.

I leveled em up wanting the portraits and had like 7 heroes left that weren't level 10, so when Blizzard gave us the bonus EXP for Dorm I decided I might as well finish the rest while the finishing was good. It also serves as a means to kill to my anxiety about leveling heroes that are already 10+...once they are all 10+, nothing really left to make me feel like I'm wasting EXP on.

Rofl. The shots.

Ketch's favorite pastime is to poop on me in the thread and then ask me to play with him when he logs on at night. There's forum Ketch and there's in-game Ketch. Two different people.

 

[brian!]

Incidentally a reddit thread popped up today asking whether it's a bannable thing to do lol

 

[kirblar]

Incidentally a reddit thread popped up today asking whether it's a bannable thing to do lol

Someone got banned for opening/closing like 300 training mode games in a short period of time because they were trying to hit Towers of Doom specifically, so people got worried. (I think it got cleared up w/ Blizz.)

 

[Alur]

Shouldn't be, it's just EXP. You can't get complete dailies and you don't get gold. You also can't leave the game if you're queued with another, though you can if you go in solo.

There'd be a lot of retroactive RAF mount suspensions and bans.

 

[Ketch]

Ketch's favorite pastime is to poop on me in the thread and then ask me to play with him when he logs on at night. There's forum Ketch and there's in-game Ketch. Two different people.

I feel like I poop on Milly more.

It comes from a place of love. Plus there's not enough time during the matches for me to talk shit.

Edit: cuss I'm too busy carrying ur ass

 

[Maledict]

Yeah, I'm stopping playing ARAM. There's a whole host of tings wrong with it right now, most of which result from it not having a proper queue mode. But the single biggest things is the lack of a matchmaking system. Every single game, regardless of comp, is an absolute roflstomp from one side onto the other. Last night I lost a *5* minute game - with a team that was ETc / Thrall / Sylvanna / Tyrande / Azmodan. That shouldn't ever be possible.

It's just un-fun in every respect, and the fact that a large part of the community seem to think that is just "how it should be" and get upset when you point things out is just fucking dumb. Being butchered (or butchering) a team that much isn't fun for anyone.

 

[Ketch]

Pls don't stop healing for me

 

[Alur]

Being butchered (or butchering) a team that much isn't fun for anyone.

Agreed. That's how it's been since the allowed us to use [lobby] and the ARAM channels started. After a while, roflstomping everybody became unfun...then again, it was all we were doing for a while so burnout is inevitable in anything you do that much.

I still pop in it with Milly every now and then, but I can't do it a whole lot. The RNG is too Hearthstone for me, and I inevitably get Vikings 25% of the time.

 

[Maledict]

It's not even the comps. The comps are part of the fun, and what I actually enjoy when you make a bad comp work.

It's the fact that I'm the highest player in my team by 30 ranks, and the enemy team is all rank 1s. There's only one way that's going down regardless of comp. No matter what the community tells me there is a *fucking huge* difference in play ability between a rank 1 and a rank 30. No offence intended to folks, but basic mechanics and fight awareness apply across all heroes.