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[dragonlife]

Yup, that works. My name is TurnipKnight. Add me as a friend!

Request sent. I'm dragonlife29.

 

[Nome]

There are a lot less strategies and overall team comps in LOL then in DOTA. This is mainly because a lot of the pro's refuse to really try new things. They want to be safe, and don't want to go into a competitive tournament with something that "might work".

The meta has changed several times over the past year. Having a jungler is just how LOl works, I guess you can classify it as part of the "meta". It's really because it simply makes more sense then not having one. From both an experience gain perspective, and a ganking perspective. You will always have a jungler, and this will never change, no matter how many times the meta does (unless Riot changes how the jungle works, or XP is given).

The past couple tournaments it has looked like this. AD + Support bot, AP carry mid, tanky dps/sustainable laners(sometimes another ap) top and a jungler. Although the lanes may change (like one game during IEM where the sustainers were mid and AP were top), that is the general format.

This is about to change with the nerf to all support, but how much, is only really theory at this point. Talked about very little, as nobody wants to give away their strats. Mainly because IEM NY is coming up.

The general format of LOL (1-1-2 and a jungler), will probably remain the same for a long time. But the overall meta will indeed change. It has gone from AOE meta, backdoor pushing, tanky dps, double AP etc.. etc..

If Riot wants to change lane formats, they would need to change the WAY XP is given out, or the way certain champions scale. out-farming your opponent is a big part of early and mid game LOL. This has gotten so big that CLG and EG were debating if Dragon was even worth doing anymore. Since the gold you can get by clearing creep waves/towers while the enemy team is getting the 190g from dragon is worth significantly more. This is the part of the game I want changed the most.

Good reply! This answers a lot of my questions, and also confirms a lot of what I was thinking. The relegation of powerups solely to neutral monsters seems to have sealed in junglers as being a core part of the game. I find it a somewhat questionable design decision, since jungling, unlike laning, presents a huge burden of knowledge problem to new players, especially regarding build, runes/masteries, and route. What I do like about the jungle in LoL is that creep camps have fixed spawns (and spawn rates), reducing the need for on-the-fly decisionmaking.

I can appreciate the problems with competitive teams being unwilling to try new strategies. We have this problem in HoN too, and it's not necessarily a problem with teams being "bad" or "stubborn", but because of how the international scene is effectively one large closed circuit. This is more prominent in HoN due to the lack of realms (other than the SEA/Garena split with the rest of the world). With DotA, you had teams that effectively had zero contact with each other outside of major international LANs. I suspect that Dota 2 will also regress to the point where fringe or surprise strategies become much weaker simply because of the overall increase in contact between top players.

 

[Legato.Reborn-]

The most rage inducing meta I have ever had the honor of playing in was the poke/siege.

And what did we get from Phreak?

"Nunu hard counters Heimer, guys."

I always have your back Phreak, and I generally agree with you -- but that was just ridiculous.

---

Oh and for the new guys -- Poke/Siege = Heimer (for the moveable base), Janna, Ezreal (Ashe worked too, but Ezreal was the god tier range carry at that time), and anyone else to compliment it. Usually a tanky WW and a Shen or something.

Fucking insane.

 

[Ark]

Is Soraka overpowered or is it just me?

 

[dragonlife]

Is Soraka overpowered or is it just me?

Who knows, but I can't unsee your avatar having a boner...

 

[Ferga]

What does GAF think of Anivia? I really want to save up for her.

you need blue for the entire game once you reach level 6

 

[Ferga]

Everytime i play orianna, i seem to get queued with the worst team who feed all day.

My question is:

is it possible to carry with Orianna without too much help from your team

 

[Merovin]

What does GAF think of Anivia? I really want to save up for her.

Love Anivia, my favourite champion.
Rush Catalyst and Tear, then finish boots and get your Rabadons. If you play it right, mana won't be that much of a problem late game.

 

[iamblades]

She's a terrible carry until late game when she's farmed 2 or 3 bloodthirsters. There's really no reason to pick Sivir if you have access to Ashe,Vayne, or Caitlyn.

I agree sivir is a terrible primary carry, but if you build her hybrid support with starks, aegis, maybe a shurelya's, and combined with her ult, you can give your team a huge edge in team fights and pushes. So many team buffs you can more than make up for the fact that she may be a bit shit as a 1 on 1 hero.

You pop on the hunt and shurelyas and your team can chase down anyone or retreat from anyone.

Pub sivirs who think she is all about killing shit give her a bad name imo.. She pushes towers, teleports back and buffs her team enough to wipe the other team off the map.

 

[Ark]

Who knows, but I can't unsee your avatar having a boner...

Aww you bastard, now I can see it too Q_Q

Just played a game as Irelia and holy balls is she fun to play! Ended up 4v3 to us so we just snowballed them in the end, but yeah, gotta powerdown some Irelia practice

Oh, and the aviator Irelia skin is amazing

EDIT:

Just because we're on that topic, we had a sivir on the enemy team. She spent most of the game hanging around with their Ashe, which just ended up being double feed for us.

 

[Home]

Bah trying to reach gold before the reset coming tuesday (most likely). Play 2 games, win both, too afraid to play anymore. Proceed to watch HSGGs stream instead.

 

[Blackface]

Good reply! This answers a lot of my questions, and also confirms a lot of what I was thinking. The relegation of powerups solely to neutral monsters seems to have sealed in junglers as being a core part of the game. I find it a somewhat questionable design decision, since jungling, unlike laning, presents a huge burden of knowledge problem to new players, especially regarding build, runes/masteries, and route. What I do like about the jungle in LoL is that creep camps have fixed spawns (and spawn rates), reducing the need for on-the-fly decisionmaking.

I can appreciate the problems with competitive teams being unwilling to try new strategies. We have this problem in HoN too, and it's not necessarily a problem with teams being "bad" or "stubborn", but because of how the international scene is effectively one large closed circuit. This is more prominent in HoN due to the lack of realms (other than the SEA/Garena split with the rest of the world). With DotA, you had teams that effectively had zero contact with each other outside of major international LANs. I suspect that Dota 2 will also regress to the point where fringe or surprise strategies become much weaker simply because of the overall increase in contact between top players.

The North American pro's usually hang out in one vent. So if you watch enough streams, you will often hear them talking about the game. They have LOTS of knowledge about LOL that most people don't have, and that has only been tested by them, with each-other, in custom games. They have tons of strategies, lane combinations, and know very specific heroes to bring out that are strong, but nobody plays (like Zilean at IEM).

Unfortunately, all this theory, and knowledge goes to waste when tournaments happen. Most pro players are young, they have no money, and often are forced to pay for their OWN trip to the tournament. Winning is not only how they make a bit of money for themselves, but how they pay for the trip. They go with what is known, and what they know works competitively. Not until a team tries something crazy (like the EU's did with TF) will they force themselves to adjust.

I think in the future, this is going to change drastically. You have a number of high-end dota teams making a switch to LOL (like Sytch, third place i nthe DOTA2 tournament). You also have a number of big time teams, creating a LOL team (like MYM). The game is also beginning to take off in Asia. With the addition of many more good players, from all over the world, you will see many different strats and the meta shifting a lot more in the future.

 

[perryfarrell]

Been playing Sona lately, very fun character! (after seeing someone from neogaf playin with her in a game I was in). Still noobish, but getting to around level 15 or so.

The only thing about Sona is that those chord sounds resonate in your head hours after playing...

 

[dragonlife]

Aww you bastard, now I can see it too Q_Q

Love Anivia, my favourite champion.
Rush Catalyst and Tear, then finish boots and get your Rabadons. If you play it right, mana won't be that much of a problem late game.

Yeah, Anivia seems to be my type of character. Ice element, regal-like, and kick-ass bird.

Articuno, basically.

I love my Lux, but I really want to switch it up with Anivia. The character I used before Lux was Kayle (so fun), but I haven't even switched back to her.

 

[shintoki]

I haven't been a fan of Sona since they initial nerf. They brought her down too much and they seem to keep nerfing her for some god awful reason. I much prefer Janna, or to play most other support Soraka, Taric, Lux, Morgana, and others. Who are indefinitely more useful now.

 

[Achtius]

Champ sneak peek

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/champion-sneak-peek-riven-exile

 

[markot]

Screw that, I want more Yordles >.<

 

[Door2Dawn]

6300 IP tanky DPS

 

[Loam]

Oh man nothing is worse in this game than having an Alistar who hits people away from you or an Anivia with bad wall placement on your team. I can understand mistiming a wall, but why in the world would you knock the person your trying to gank away from the team?

6300 IP tanky DPS

I'm waiting for the inevitable >6300 priced champion.

 

[Hasemo]

Played 2 fun games with my friends. Full stack, all tanks, 5x fortify+flash, full tank equip. We won the first game after the enemies surrendered @ 20.
Got owned in the second one, but I'm still not sure if it was because of us feeding or the enemies having too good team composition for this sort of stuff.

 

[dragonlife]

This is kind of BS. The game has an IP/EXP cap? Just played a game and didn't get shit. I guess it's so people don't go insane with the boosts? Still kinda bullshit, though...

 

[Nome]

The North American pro's usually hang out in one vent. So if you watch enough streams, you will often hear them talking about the game. They have LOTS of knowledge about LOL that most people don't have, and that has only been tested by them, with each-other, in custom games. They have tons of strategies, lane combinations, and know very specific heroes to bring out that are strong, but nobody plays (like Zilean at IEM).

Unfortunately, all this theory, and knowledge goes to waste when tournaments happen. Most pro players are young, they have no money, and often are forced to pay for their OWN trip to the tournament. Winning is not only how they make a bit of money for themselves, but how they pay for the trip. They go with what is known, and what they know works competitively. Not until a team tries something crazy (like the EU's did with TF) will they force themselves to adjust.

I think in the future, this is going to change drastically. You have a number of high-end dota teams making a switch to LOL (like Sytch, third place i nthe DOTA2 tournament). You also have a number of big time teams, creating a LOL team (like MYM). The game is also beginning to take off in Asia. With the addition of many more good players, from all over the world, you will see many different strats and the meta shifting a lot more in the future.

Yeah, it's understandable. I'd be wary of Asian teams starting to play LoL though... they'll probably shift the meta more towards farming In the DotA scene at least, the European teams tend to be more active players (although the Asian teams tend to come up with the more unique strategies).

 

[Blizzard]

This is kind of BS. The game has an IP/EXP cap? Just played a game and didn't get shit. I guess it's so people don't go insane with the boosts? Still kinda bullshit, though...

You don't get much IP/EXP from bot games as far as I know, and if you play a 40-70 minute human game you typically get like...100-180 IP and/or EXP. Or maybe less, there's only one win of the day bonus as I'm sure you know. If there's special boost limit stuff, I don't know about it.

 

[dragonlife]

You don't get much IP/EXP from bot games as far as I know, and if you play a 40-70 minute human game you typically get like...100-180 IP and/or EXP. Or maybe less, there's only one win of the day bonus as I'm sure you know. If there's special boost limit stuff, I don't know about it.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's because of the boosts. Sneaky bastards.

 

[SouthernDragon]

Played 2 fun games with my friends. Full stack, all tanks, 5x fortify+flash, full tank equip. We won the first game after the enemies surrendered @ 20.
Got owned in the second one, but I'm still not sure if it was because of us feeding or the enemies having too good team composition for this sort of stuff.

I purchased Kog'maw SPECIFICALLY for this sort of bullshit.

Nothing is more delicious than melting three tanks.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's because of the boosts. Sneaky bastards.

Pretty sure it's to encourage people to play PvP.

 

[Ferga]

Screw that, I want more Yordles >.<

sorry to tell you but the next few champs are noxus assasins

 

[dragonlife]

Pretty sure it's to encourage people to play PvP.

Yuck. You're right. Just played to prove this right/wrong.

How dare they make me play with others!? This is an outrage! I want my money back.

...

Ha. Well, I guess I'll be playing some more tomorrow Oh, and we got destroyed. My team surrendered, but I wanted to keep going. I guess it's good experience in going against different Champs.

Went mid as Lux against a Valzahar. Never fought him before but I did a good job of evading his attacks. The other team's Twitch was really good. He's the one that kept getting kills.

 

[Neutrality]

The other team's Twitch was really good. He's the one that kept getting kills.

I think what you meant to say was: "My team was too stubborn to buy an Oracles."

 

[Blizzard]

I think what you meant to say was: "My team was too stubborn to buy an Oracles."

Buying 4 oracles is expensive. That's like 1600 gold. Otherwise you have to not die, and people die a lot.

 

[dragonlife]

I think what you meant to say was: "My team was too stubborn to buy an Oracles."

I don't even know what that is

 

[markot]

The Oracle's Elixir is an item in League of Legends that grants the Champion the ability to see Stealthed enemy Champions

 

[Teknopathetic]

You don't have everyone buy an oracle's elixir, why would you buy 4 of them?

 

[Blizzard]

You don't have everyone buy an oracle's elixir, why would you buy 4 of them?

After you buy one, you will die. You will then need to buy another, so you can see teemo shrooms and twitch. You will then get focused and die again (because people die a lot in LoL), etc. etc. Unless you're good at not dying it gets expensive!

Speaking of not dying, I tried playing a tank again. Tanks are hard because you literally cannot win if your team is not good. I sucked at all the AD carries so I'm trying a tank again...now solo queue after some GAF losses!

One game, 2-3 people on skype. Some guy out of the room, maybe someone had a nosebleed? Someone might have been arguing over mid initially. Lost. Predictable due to bragging at start.

Another game, suggested starting the game by ganking mid (which leads to an immediate loss prediction). Lost due to tryndamere having like 24 kills, two infinity edges, two bloodthirsters, and stark's. He did die a couple of times. Once he had 2-3 lifesteal items ignite was pretty much out of the question though.

Third game, immediate fighting for who gets to go mid, predictable loss. Had like...2 kills to enemy team's 14-18 before surrender at 20 minutes. Top row died 6-8 times in a row, and then I went up and fed them a couple more. Xin with no critboost items knocked me in the air and did like 2-3 crits in a very short timespan. Tristana sat in spawn near the end and planted like 30 wards, after asking the other team early on to not help the other person who was trying to mid. One of our top people said they were drinking and died like 1.5 minutes into the game since they were taking a drink, and later died when they accidentally minimized the game.

Let's see what the fourth game brings! *edit* So far, AFK master yi with l33tspeak name!

 

[dragonlife]

I'm just doing Twisted Treeline. 3v3 seems like a good number for me. Though 5v5 is super fun if the other team is equal in skill or worse, because it feels nice to win after getting destroyed sometimes

Anyway, 2 games of Twisted Treeline. First time we won, just now, we lost. Badly.

 

[Teknopathetic]

"After you buy one, you will die. You will then need to buy another, so you can see teemo shrooms and twitch. You will then get focused and die again (because people die a lot in LoL), etc. etc. Unless you're good at not dying it gets expensive!"


This is why you get it on characters who are either tanky enough to survive or who don't require much items to contribute to team fights. Same with warding/counter-warding. Too many people get caught up in trying to go for some 16000+ gold ideal end-game build, which is why they end up losing to stealth characters in pubs.

The 400 gold pays for itself in killing wards and preventing potential stealth ganks or even catching a stealth character out not paying attention.

 

[Blizzard]

"After you buy one, you will die. You will then need to buy another, so you can see teemo shrooms and twitch. You will then get focused and die again (because people die a lot in LoL), etc. etc. Unless you're good at not dying it gets expensive!"


This is why you get it on characters who are either tanky enough to survive or who don't require much items to contribute to team fights. Same with warding/counter-warding. Too many people get caught up in trying to go for some 16000+ gold ideal end-game build, which is why they end up losing to stealth characters in pubs.

The 400 gold pays for itself in killing wards and preventing potential stealth ganks or even catching a stealth character out not paying attention.

I'm too pessimistic to think anyone can stay alive with one.

Lost 4-6 games in a row, so I'm calling it a night. That last one, we almost had a chance -- prom queen Annie was 16/5/5, but we were no match for Warwick, Garen, Tristana, backed up by Janna. I messed up too much so it may have been partly my fault we lost -- I was 4/4/16.

 

[dragonlife]

So what's AFF in LoL-speak? I teamed up with a Tryndamere who would keep telling me that. I repeatedly told him I didn't know what it meant and that he should tell me. He never did. He kept repeating it over and over: "aff fuck. waiting on aff." I told him to calm his tits. Goddamn.

At least we won and I never saw him again after a while

 

[Blizzard]

So what's AFF in LoL-speak? I teamed up with a Tryndamere who would keep telling me that. I repeatedly told him I didn't know what it meant and that he should tell me. He never did. He kept repeating it over and over: "aff fuck. waiting on aff." I told him to calm his tits. Goddamn.

At least we won and I never saw him again after a while

I dunno. I've seen that as well

AFF

AFFFFFFFF

I can only assume it's some mysterious Brazillian word.

 

[markot]

I assumed it was 'a for fcuksakes' >.>

 

[Teknopathetic]

"I'm too pessimistic to think anyone can stay alive with one."

It's not about whether you die with one or not, it's about weighing the consequences of having one against not having one. If 400g can turn a 5v5 into a 5v4 and help you win a team fight, which'll give the possibility to push towers, baron, whatever afterwards, it's worth it. Quit worrying about the fact that you lose it when you die. The whole point in getting it is to remove some advantage (map vision, stealth) your opponent already has over you. If you just resign yourself to "well if someone spends 400g on it, they'll just focus them and they'll die" then you'll just continue letting the enemy team have some advantage over you.

 

[CrazedProfessional]

I like Olaf, Olaf's E is fun as fuck early game.

JUST TAKE A THIRD OF YOUR HP kthx

 

[Ark]

I've only had LoL for 2 weeks now and I'm already beginning to seriously dislike Riot.

This is the third time in a week the servers have completely borked out. Not happy ...

 

[Archie]

Mac version of LoL discontinued. Looks like Valve gained 10 new Dota 2 customers.

 

[Boken]

Mac version of LoL discontinued. Looks like Valve gained 10 new Dota 2 customers.

Well there goes the dream...

 

[Ark]

Mac version of LoL discontinued. Looks like Valve gained 10 new Dota 2 customers.

Anyone that has a Mac and wants to do any form of gaming will have dual booted to Windows, so it's fine.

That's what I did...Heck I hardly use OS X now. Even if a game is ported to Mac, it'll run better in Windows 90% of the time. Although I will enjoy being able to play Dota 2 on either OS.

 

[MultiCore]

Greetings LoL GAF. I started playing this a couple of weeks ago.
I settled in to Morgana as my current champion of choice.

However, playing PvP with randoms is too, well, random.
Please consider adding me to your friends list. Username: SelfDeception

Thanks!

I'll also gladly take any tips or builds for Morgana if you got any great suggestions that the online guides don't cover.

Also, if there are better champions in the same vein as Morg, I'd be willing to take a look. IP is pretty hard to come by, I only play a game or two per day.

 

[Future]

"I'm too pessimistic to think anyone can stay alive with one."

It's not about whether you die with one or not, it's about weighing the consequences of having one against not having one. If 400g can turn a 5v5 into a 5v4 and help you win a team fight, which'll give the possibility to push towers, baron, whatever afterwards, it's worth it. Quit worrying about the fact that you lose it when you die. The whole point in getting it is to remove some advantage (map vision, stealth) your opponent already has over you. If you just resign yourself to "well if someone spends 400g on it, they'll just focus them and they'll die" then you'll just continue letting the enemy team have some advantage over you.

Can just buy pink wards as well if you are afraid of dying. Wards help anyway in other ways

Thing about twitch and stealth characters currently is that the stealth is limited. So even if you have regular wards around you will probably see them before they go stealth, if you place them in side bushes or river.

 

[Achtius]

Stressful game is stressful. Top is feeding like hell (Yi and Soraka), Fiddle was inept (he ult and use hourglass immediately when enemy is running (i.e. he got no one), bottom was being pushed by me and Janna (JANNA THE CARRY!).

At mid game, for some reason, my team want to have a 4v4 battle without tanks around (me and amumu), but amumu teleport in and rape everyone and when I got there everyone were close to death, so I arrived too late and die along with them. Our towers were being pushed, and lost one before they retreated. But we still managed to picked off 1 or 2 of the enemy's champs. But at this point, they were still ahead by at least 15 kills.

After a while,we saw 2 of them heading toward baron and we ambush and killed Akali and Zielan. We did baron and amumu try to steal it from us but fail and we killed him. We push towers and kill their mid inhibitor and the reduce top tower to 400 life. Since I tanked the tower, I told them to b, but they refuse so half of them got wipe out (i did stay and knock them up before running like mad), and i barely escape back to base.

After everyone spawn, we push and finally won

Also their Aklai doesn't seem to understand the eye above me represent oracle as she just use her dome thingy and stealth and not do anything while i whack her to death multiple times. XD

 

[SouthernDragon]

Anyone that has a Mac and wants to do any form of gaming will have dual booted to Windows, so it's fine.
That's what I did...Heck I hardly use OS X now. Even if a game is ported to Mac, it'll run better in Windows 90% of the time. Although I will enjoy being able to play Dota 2 on either OS.

I play LoL primarily on OS X because that's I use for work and study, even though I DO have a dual partition.

This is massively disappointing. Rayven, why do you gotta go and break my heart like this? I never ever ever ever had a problem with the Mac client... well, at least not for a good long while. This is busted, dude!

At least I'm getting a Champion's Pack for free...

 

[JWong]

Playing with LoL health pools probably messed with your memories because you can very easily kill someone pre level 5 with just one or two well timed stuns and attack move.

Oh wait, LoL doesn't have many hard stuns either. No wonder you think players need to be 6 to kill.

No, I remember all the chain CC that CAN occur. Mostly because the guy who got ganked failed to recognize characters on the other team. But one character have more than one CC pre level 5 is completely unbalanced. I don't know what you consider a "hard stun", but a lot of LoL heroes do have early CC abilities that they can take from level 1.

The next time you have all of that pre 30 minutes, get a screenshot (preferably with scoreboard). I really need to see some proof of this.

Sure, next time.

TP Scroll can only port to tower. But yeah that's the gist of it.

LoL does not value teleport. I don't know how you can even say this when they just recently removed them because they couldn't balance them properly.

Also Prophet isn't a nuker/carry. He can help ganks, but he can't gank by himself. His primary role is to push and disable once he gets Guinsoo. By himself, his teleport is only a pushing skill. It's only a ganking skill when used in conjunction with another hero. Contrast that to Pantheon or TF, who can easily kill a hero by themselves using their natural burst/dps.

Ermmm they removed teleport? I just used it yesterday.

Prophet's teleport isn't an ulti on massive cooldown, so it's different. If you're going to give Soraka a global teleport, and scrolls of TP were available, that'll mean so much BD pushing, BD defending, more money spent not on core items. Eliminate all that useless junk and focus on the game rather than teleport mish-mash.

I said towers aren't a perfect deterrent, because they shouldn't be. Tower diving should have reasonable risk/rewards, which they do in Dota. So I'm fine with it. Also, towers are highly valuable because they give massive gold and hard to kill because of TP scrolls and Rune of Fortification.

Tower dive happens in LoL and has risk/reward. Don't tell me you haven't seen a successful early tower dive for first blood, because that would be so untrue.

You do realize Ashe is picked because she has global gank initiation right? Your statement was, "Practically anyone can gank from mid". Which is not true. You even said you might not want to pick a hero for their ganking abilities, but for their carrying abilities, which implies that not every hero can easily gank from mid. Are you even reading your own posts or just treating every one of my responses as standalone?

Annie, Kass, Cait, Oriana, and a lot of characters are good mid because they need to level faster so they can move lanes and gank faster. But even putting Yi in mid with exhaust can still catch top and bottom unaware, so, yes, anyone can gank from being in mid.

But if you're referring to my other post, a good team comp would have a team that matches well in every lane.

Balance debates should assume two sides are of equal or comparable skills. What's the point of balancing if you say "well champion X is good if you're much better than the other player". Anyway mid kat is only viable in low level (I'd say sub 30) play for people who don't know how to counter her harassing.

Game Balancing =/= Equal. Starcraft shows you that. If two Kats mid, then the one with the better skill wins. If Heim and Kogmaw duke it out, you'd expect Kogmaw to be able outrange and out nuke Heim. Not if the Heim player has better skills and catches Kog's mistakes.

I already spoke about a recent game where I successfully did well as mid kat, but you'd just pull out the elitist card again. So I'll drop it.

A hero can just move closer to the creeps so that to get in range of your own you have to get within range of their attack/nuke. This is true in Dota, HoN, and LoL. It's called zoning, and people zone denying as well as farming.

Again, you have to get closer to the enemy attack range to farm than you do for denying. It's just fact.

They're unnecessary. For someone that claims that LoL trims the excess in Dota you seem fine with masteries and runes, which exist solely to provide an artificial feeling of persistence.

There's nothing artificial about leveling up. LoL removes the excess game mechanics that is funneled to masteries and runes. If you want to play with builds, do it on your own time. LoL is about PVP, not about having a spreadsheet of builds to counter the other team.

I don't know how you can even make a generalization like this without anything to back it up.

I don't know how you don't value team comp when you keep talking about high ELO players don't do this or that. I definitely seen you say such and such hero is pathetic and never should be used.

I said it was a personal preference. Is my enjoyment of the game somehow wrong?

Well you're obviously think masteries and runes are wrong.

Don't play the "omg elitist" card. Riot balances the game based on high level/tourney play. I've given evidence of the unrivaled popularity of Flash in the highest level LoL tournament in recent memory. Are you really asserting that your experience with this game carries as much weight as the those of the teams in Dreamhack?

Can you give me evidence that Riot doesn't balance the game from high level matches? You practically countered yourself with your own Flash evidence. They would have nerfed Flash to oblivion if what you're saying is true.

If the other team doesn't give me a challenge I don't consider it a win, I consider it a waste of time. It's just an OCD I have, I expect it's all that anime. I don't usually get pleasure from a victory unless my opponent is equal/better than I am. If you just wanted to win, then you can smurfstomp all day.

No choice to select smurfs in matchmaking. It's actually quite strange that if you beat a high ELO premade in 20 minutes without knowing who they were, you'd consider it a loss because of anonymity.

Sure. Anyway, you said "I doubt you played this game that long", and my screenshot was just to prove your asssumption wrong. If you wanted my ranked stats you should've said so earlier.

Well well, you're not high ELO and you're talking like you're high ELO. Can you stop using high ELO as an argument now?

Another dismissal that tries to dodge the point I'm making. Let me spell it out for you.

Riot doesn't care about what someone in <1500s says about the balance of the game. I'm part of this group, you are, in all likelihood, part of this group. Most of LoLGAF besides Legato is part of this group. In a discussion about balance, our opinions are worth nothing in their eyes.

However this doesn't mean that someone <1500 can't observe and infer what's going on at 1800+. While it's difficult due to the lack of replays, LoL is popular enough on Own3DTV such that it is quite easy for anyone to see what's going on in the pro scene. Whenever I talk about balance, I'm setting aside my own experiences for what I've seen and learned from people who are in that bracket, either through streams or posts or blogs.

Anyway, I don't see why people think "elitism" is some kind of logical fallacy. Sure, it's annoying and condescending, but that doesn't inherently negate any points the elitist makes. Just look at EJ. About the most elitist crowd in WoW but they also have a ton of math and data backing up any criticisms they have about balance in the game.

So where's this evidence that they don't look at low rank or unranked games? As I had already asked.

Blizzard has metrics of all ranked games and use that for balancing even when they have high level tournaments. They're not just concerned about tournament play, and neither are Riot. Game designers aren't hell bent to make the most elitist niche game.

I'm not sure what ths answer has to do with the existence/nonexistence of metagame in SC2, PvP in EVE/WoW as compared to PvP in Dota/HoN, or the effects of persistence on competitive play and balance.

Are you even interested in discussion or are you just using my posts as a general launchpoint for whatever you have on your mind?

A player buy a hero, plays the hero, level up, and informed that they have a mastery point. Then they look at what they achieve and look into what to spend it on. Get exposure to guides and start learning more about the character and learn to play.

If you don't understand how persistence can expose players to do non-gametime research, then you're pretty lost on this point. Someone can pick one of the hundred random DotA characters and never ever learn how to play a single one of them. Of course, we'll have to see if Valve can do a better job teaching it.

By static I mean people tend to stay in their lane vs people tend to move about.

So LoL doesn't have static lanes by your definition. Lane switching happens occasionally pre level 6 if a player feels not confident with the hero their facing, but lane switching happens a lot when people are ready to gank.

Because LoL lanes are well defined and people know/take for granted about what to do, it removes pointless lane switching and spending an extra whatever scroll amounts of gold that bogs down the game. Again, a team can always shake up what people take for granted and take advantage of it, which causes the occasional lane switching early on.

Why do you extrapolate single games to the entire metagame? What is even your basis for this? And I've mentioned numerous times that, unless you're actually a high-ranked player, the game isn't balanced for you.

I think previous discussions cover this point. The fact remains that every time you say "Kat can't Mid" or "Bot always have two", it will be proven wrong because the possibility exists, even at high level play.

This mostly stems from your assumption that you can't kill unless you have levels, which is wrong, as anyone who's played a bit of high level Dota/HoN can tell you. The same is true of destructible jungle vs brush. You're arguing with insufficient knowledge/experience.

Uh when did I say that? Pre minion spawn killing happen a lot in LoL when mistakes happen. And that's usually because of brush.

Then neither is tower killing, farming, jungling, baron, dragon or nexus. If you admit all of this is PvP, then you must also admit that denying is PvP. Using words like "PvP" and "PvE" to describe different aspects of the game is misleading. Creeps and towers are equivalent to economy in RTS because they serve as a resource to improve your champion/hero. By extension, controlling the rate at which people farm/take down towers is interfering/disrupting resource gain, which definitely counts as PvP, even if it isn't direct.

DotA has all that + Denying, which means LoL is more PVP than DotA. Get it?

In Dota, people wait around in lanes at low level in order to set up a potential kill. Like I said, playing LoL so often has conditioned you into thinking that players can't/shouldn't kill before 5 or 6. But the truth of the matter is that some people purposefully abandon lanes just to run around setting up ganks with their stuns/disables. Many times these players will be about 2-3 levels behind everyone else on their team, yet no one will fault them for this. Because their contribution to the team's overall victory far outweighs their lack of farm/experience.

Like I said, can happen in LoL. So what now?

My reward from Dota is just playing the game but okay.

No idea. Is it some Jeapordy thing?

You =/= Everyone

Game designers just don't think about one type of player. The fact is the game is fun and you get something extra. A player like you can just ignore the extra if they choose to. You just have real issues with having more.

For all their progress business-wise, they still feel like a startup developer struggling to make a profit. Hopefully, Dominion will change this.

-- Note: I haven't bought a single RP

Riot struggling to make profit? AHAHAHAHAAAA that's a first!