Support NeoGAF

[brian!]

i mean that's fine, league is pretty fun to watch and challenging to play and so's dota
like any core difference between the games doesn't really change that, it's just a difference i would lay out if i actually cared to compare the games

o dam those tristana nerfs
taking the slow off lucian e makes sense
damn this patch is pretty huge, worldz coming up

 

[Nev]

Well, I won't say I like the fact that every new champion has a fucking gapcloser and nowadays you can't solo lane competitively without a reliable escape.

 

[Haly]

Why is Tristana suddenly a problem now? I looked at her wiki page and she's barely changed from her beta incarnation. What happened?

Well, I won't say I like the fact that every new champion has a fucking gapcloser and nowadays you can't solo lane competitively without a reliable escape.

I'm aware. It's because Flash exists, and Rito didn't remove it 3 years ago when they had the chance. Now the game balance revolves around Flash, like DOTA2 balance revolves around BKB.

There's some talks about it. It's evident (to Riot, or at least Guinsoo) that Flash is the source of a lot of problems including the super-passive laning phase.

What's stopping them is that they'll have to roll out a series of buffs and nerfs to people with built in flash, and people who needed flash to do anything.

 

[CRS]

Why is Tristana suddenly a problem now? I looked at her wiki page and she's barely changed from her beta incarnation. What happened?

Nerfs to Bloodthirster and buffs to BotRK and IE.

Also, meta is kind of a hyper-carry status right now.

 

[brian!]

yung haly :3
the hyper carries are receiving pretty big nerfs, but a big part of them springing up were the item changes itll be interesting to see what happens

but i am also ready for corki at worlds part 3
njbs picked ez for their blind pick match

 

[Haly]

Young xcloser, master of grammar.

 

[Leezard]

Well, that's thanks to the League Champion Design Template

1) Gap closer
2) Auto Attack Passive with Steroid Active
3) Skillshot/conditional CC

You mean as opposed to

1) passive ability
2) point and click spells

mobility creep is one thing, but including "skillshots" is silly

 

[brian!]

where is neki tho

 

[jerd]

Rocket Jump is a weird place to take power from. Was it problematic on Trist? I say keep the high slow values as a way to bait Trist players into jumping towards enemies.

Idk about her laning tho. I assume that's where the problem with it was?

 

[brian!]

her all in potential is pretty high atm, it has resulted in tristana often coming out of lane ahead against things like lucian
like her early laning was probably too good since she is the best late game carry

 

[Stone Ocean]

Why is Tristana suddenly a problem now? I looked at her wiki page and she's barely changed from her beta incarnation. What happened?

Item plus rune changes pushed the meta heavily torwards auto-attacking hyper carries like Trist. With all that, a carry that scales as hard as Trist having an early game as good as hers is no bueno.

Rocket Jump is a weird place to take power from. Was it problematic on Trist? I say keep the high slow values as a way to bait Trist players into jumping towards enemies.

Idk about her laning tho. I assume that's where the problem with it was?

The slow on Rocket Jump basically lets her just dive you like a moron early on, and also ensures that if you get as much tagged by any CC at level 6 you're pretty much dead.

 

[Haly]

You mean as opposed to

1) passive ability
2) point and click spells

mobility creep is one thing, but including "skillshots" is silly

Most of those were made by Guinsoo

( ≖‿&#8790

 

[Leezard]

Most of those were made by Guinsoo

( ≖‿&#8790

That doesn't change anything, really

 

[Haly]

where is neki tho

I thought Neki went off to play LoL with Boken, did he leave you guys too?

http://steamcommunity.com/id/ultimoo/

Here's his steam page, looks like he's hooked on Divinity.

That doesn't change anything, really

More serious answer: Most of the point and click heroes were from the early days of the game where "hero design" amounted to little more than WC3 heroes with shuffled skills. They don't get removed for the same reason Riot hasn't removed Ashe, Kayle or Ryze. They can, but would the game benefit from it? Probably not. A wider hero pool and a wider array of possible playstyles is just more interesting than a narrower one.

(Well, not true for Ryze seeing as how he's also OP now or something.)

 

[jerd]

Vel'koz changes reverted too now

 

[brian!]

boken only plays civ 5 now, you guys broke him

this is only my conjecture but:
actually it's interesting to compare the history of development in dota and lol, I think it helps explain why league kind of got stuck in its development, and why they only revamp the game once every season

dota's beginning was just as wack as league's, like league had stacking sunfire eve and regular skill tf teleport, but dota had really crazy stuff too (guinsoooooo). when dota started getting popular through all-stars, icefrog was able to kind of twist it into a more competitive game and turn it into something less crazy. but at the time dota was not monetized, it did not have corporate interest or a large base of players

at least not when you compare it to league, which started out with a specific mindset (resulting in awful phrases, particular champ skill sets, particular items, etc.) and had a decent base of players during what was basically it's dota testing phase. so you had some wack ass champs and game infrastructure, but also a pretty large player base that was feeding you money that you had to answer to

so when league achieved enough knowledge to start making a game that kind of made sense, they weren't able to revamp the game as completely as icefrog did because the context was way different (and ofc they made their own particular choices). in this sense, riot has kind of made do with what they had, so big things like taking flash out was kind of harder to achieve?

i dont think riot ever expected that huge fucking surge in popularity it got (which I would say is due in great part to dota 2 coming out a year or two after league)
iunno

riot's focus on "e-sports" was actually a pretty good move

 

[DeadNames]

"oh great, lee sin nerfs. way to go Riot" - Reddit

:^)

 

[Haly]

boken only plays civ 5 now, you guys broke him

Sid Meier's Civilization V
79.7 hrs last two weeks / 84 hrs on record

Dang, you're right.

 

[Newt]

Keep the Sivir buffs coming!

 

[Haly]

Also:

but including "skillshots" is silly

ACTIVE: Braum propels ice from his shield that travels forward in a line, dealing magic damage to the first enemy hit, applying Concussive Blows and slowing them by 70%. The slow decays over 2 seconds.

ACTIVE: Vel'Koz roots himself in place and unleashes a laser forward in a line, damaging all enemies caught in its wake at 0.25 second intervals and slowing them by 20% for 1 second.

ACTIVE: After a short delay, Jinx fires a shock blast that deals physical damage to the first enemy hit, also granting sight and slowing it for 2 seconds.

ACTIVE: Aatrox unleashes and sends forward the power of his blade, dealing magic damage to enemies in a line and slowing them by 40% for a few seconds.

Riot has been putting CC on skill shots since day 1, because they don't like lockdown in their game. There's nothing silly about including "skillshot CC" whatsoever, it's just plain observation.

 

[Stone Ocean]

Keep the Sivir buffs coming!

I wish they'd increase the reduction time on her rank 1 ult as well.

 

[Leezard]

Also:






Riot has been putting CC on skill shots since day 1, because they don't like lockdown in their game. There's nothing silly about including "skillshot CC" whatsoever.

Oh wait, I misunderstood what you wrote. I read it as "Skillshot" / "conditional cc". Not "Skillshot cc" / "conditional cc".
So yes, more mechanics for outplaying opponents in League, that is correct.

 

[DeadNames]

Riot has been putting CC on skill shots since day 1, because they don't like lockdown in their game. There's nothing silly about including "skillshot CC" whatsoever, it's just plain observation.

Wait a minute, are you trying to defend the cancer-inducing spells like Sion Q/Annie Q/E/ult/any point and click stun?

It's just cheap to go vs, lol. No fun getting instakilled because i got in range of a stun i couldn't dodge.

 

[brian!]

http://www.hallyuknow.com/2014/07/press-release-kcon-2014-to-host-ogn.html

locodoco is hosting this thing in LA in august

we've talked about point-and-click stuns, you have to learn not to get in range and all champs who have this are weak in particular ways, like it's really standard
there is nothing wrong with point and click spells

 

[Haly]

Wait a minute, are you trying to defend the cancer-inducing spells like Sion Q/Annie Q/E/ult/any point and click stun?

It's just cheap to go vs, lol. No fun getting instakilled because i got in range of a stun i couldn't dodge.

That's another discussion I don't feel like having again. I was only trying to substantiate this post, where xcloser stipulated that League champions were chosen for how well they fit their role while DOTA2 heroes are chosen for specific skills, and I said that it's no surprise champions would compete amongst themselves to be "Best in slot" when all of them are so similar.

 

[zkylon]

oh man i missed the fighting

on pbe

lebonk buffs are nice, tho won't change much

graves buffs are ok, might actually be enough to make him decent?

good nerfs all around, sad about nami but she won't really mind.

edit: trist really needs her e gutted, such a bullshit no fun spell :/

With all the other PBE textures, Riot maintained the loss of detail (if any at all) on the other skins a lot better without messing up the colors, sans her hair. Which I previously didn't mention anyways, so I don't know why you bring it up. I have a PBE account and Silent Night Sona simply doesn't look cohesive on either version of Summoner's Rift right now, to the point it appears as if they forgot to go through another pass for that one, compared to Sona's other skins.

We're probably going to keep disagreeing anyways.

yup, i can agree it can use touch ups but not any more than default soni

Three bans have been the norm since Season 2, with no sight of this being improved upon for Season 5... despite the dozens of additions and even then we practically had to beg for 3 instead of 2!

Even if literally all the champions were balanced (which is an insurmountable task), you'd still run into a numbers issue with the current amount of available bans. I never said they couldn't work on the balance either alongside increasing how many bans are permitted to each team, because it shouldn't even be a matter of "choose between one or the other." Both are problematic.

i still don't get how many must have bans people want

i ban yasuo, lee sin and am left with a third ban that's up for whatever pops in my head

there aren't that many completely oppressive champions like yasuo in the game and even then most people playing them are shit like with lebonk, thresh, kass, jax, etc.

While Cait is, gameplay wise, more complex than Sniper, she's actually a lot easier, because she has so many tools at her disposal, as well as the ubiquitous Flash.

One of the things most League purists never realize is that the point-and-click autoattackers in DOTA2 are actually very difficult to play well, because their narrow toolkit requires supreme positioning.

When you don't have built in movement (Lucian, Ezreal, Cait, Trist, Vayne, Flash), playing a right clicker becomes much harder.

See: Ashe, Miss Fortune

i think you're reading it the other way around cos you're thinking it like doto

in league having more mobility raises the skillcap as champions trade a lot of things for that mobility so they require using it well to actually do ok

like i'd say ashy and mf are among the easiest to play champions, while actually vayne or lucian or even ezreal are much harder

cait is pretty easy but again using her correctly requires you to position well to exploit her range.

tristana is just tristana and will get reworked some day

Young xcloser, master of grammar.

lawl

try to find mine

 

[brian!]

yeah and I was making a generalization, both games are more complicated than they seem on the surface
if we were to talk about that point, which I don't really see as important in the larger picture, we could also talk about the way the games are advertised; riot, for example, has gone to great lengths to categorize it's champs (like remember when they changed adc to marksman, fukkin weird) and to maintain a "standard" meta. this has positives and negatives, but the main thing to take away is that they often attempt to communicate with their public as well as shape the game towards what they themselves want
dota has this deified enigmatic dude that hardly ever talks and makes these omniscient changes with a wave of his hand, and because the players aren't inundated with "roles" has a more organic (seeming?) thing going on

like there are a lot of things you can get into to figure out why league is one way and dota is one way

 

[Tizoc]

I just did.

Flash roar into erryone, pop ult attack randomly. Die and laugh while everyone else stomps the enemy. Also get Blade of the ruined king as your 1 dmg item. That thing is awesome on Voli. Alternatively if enemy team has Lulu/Thresh or anyone that kites you, peel very hard.

I'm in gld 3

Hmm I might practice jungling with Voli, how should my item path be? Jungle Armor>Speedy boots>tank?

 

[Haly]

in league having more mobility raises the skillcap as champions trade a lot of things for that mobility so they require using it well to actually do ok

I think Ashe would be harder to play in a competitive environment than Cait, is this wrong? Assuming players are at a level where they can comfortably reach 90% of their chosen Champion's skill cap, the Champion with the superior kit (mobility, lockdown) wins.

This is what I mean when I say "Sniper is hard to play", not that Sniper is a complex hero, but that, when everyone is playing their roles/hero to their maximum ability, Sniper becomes increasingly marginalized due to his poor kit. Not that you can't play Sniper at all, (he was picked twice in TI4), but it's an uphill climb for him, disproportionate to his mechanical complexity.

lawl

try to find mine

Runes are enhancements like masteries, which you can buy with IP at the store. Most people suggest to wait until level 20 to start buying runes (since it unlocks the very best runes, the tier 3 ones), so I'd do that, and then check a guide or something like that for some pointers in which runes to buy for your champions.

Just played my first match with fellow gaffers. I was the only non-level 30 of the bunch, and at least I didn't fed, and they did the rest of the work, so I'm pretty pleased how it went

edit: Dance In My Blood is right, you can only buy runes with IP. I just assumed everything would be sold for RP as well heh.

Vlad is in no way a tank. He's a great poker before a team fight and can usually last longer than most mages in a team fight and so can clean up, but unless you build him completely defense orientated (HP, Armor, MR), he wont be tanking anything. Even building him like that I think gimps him since he has no passive survivability. Also, AP/HP is just so strong it can poke forever and stay alive to clean up and get fed. Just play him like a mage and you'll be right.

Confirmed playing League makes you illiterate.

 

[brian!]

basically things that are less safe are harder to use because you have less space to maneuver and less situations you can comfortably be in
this is related to range too

however, im pretty sure you'd see more ashe and varus if certain items didn't exist
like ashe zyra was da bomb last season and varus saw a bunch of play too, they had really good ults
but "safe" picks are really valuable to the pick/ban of league
riot seems to be attacking a lot of safe picks tho before worlds
im surprised gragas didn't get some sort of nerf, but we'll see

 

[zkylon]

I think Ashe would be harder to play in a competitive environment than Cait, is this wrong? Assuming players are at a level where they can comfortably reach 90% of their chosen Champion's skill cap, the Champion with the superior kit (mobility, lockdown) wins.

This is what I mean when I say "Sniper is hard to play", not that Sniper is a complex hero, but that, when everyone is playing their roles/hero to their maximum ability, Sniper becomes increasingly marginalized due to his poor kit. Not that you can't play Sniper at all, (he was picked twice in TI4), but it's an uphill climb for him, disproportionate to his mechanical complexity.

right, well, champions like caitlyn have a bit more tools than ashy, in part thanks to their mobility but also since ashy isn't so great at least individually.

i can't really compare to doto heroes but sure, mobility raises skillcap so if you're good you can do better than a champion with a lower skillcap like ashy.

now since these are complicated games it's not as simple (c9 were doing a ashe+zyra lane and shitting on everyone because the combo was really effective in spite of having 0 mobility), but a lot of low skillcap champions are played often because of their effectiveness

it's complicated

basically things that are less safe are harder to use because you have less space to maneuver and less situations you can comfortably be in
this is related to range too

however, im pretty sure you'd see more ashe and varus if certain items didn't exist
like ashe zyra was da bomb last season and varus saw a bunch of play too, they had really good ults

if by items you mean lee sin damn straight :3

i think it's weird to use the word hard for this tho

low mobility champions punish mobility more but that doesn't mean they aren't safe or simple or whatever. riven is a champion with a lot of nuisance and shit and she has crazy mobility. same with zed or lebonk or whatever.

Confirmed playing League makes you illiterate.

lol that's hilarious

 

[CRS]

My first ranked game in foooooooorever. Wish me luck.

 

[zkylon]

look at me all happy for playing with gaffers

 

[zkylon]

back to what matters, sona skins:

T_T

 

[brian!]

I constantly fight the urge to type in a videogame forum the way i would when i write a letter to someone

i mean items, ashe and varus are picked for their large utility, and there is item that deletes that whole thing right now, and ofc ad item changes
you don't have to be in range of lee sin, and a dash won't help you that much either if you are in his range
it's basically that the ppl with more mobility have more effective range in a 360 degree radius

the fact that there are champs that can jump ur d makes mobility valuable, but every ad has to position correctly

another urge i fight is to think out what i want to post rather than making several edits on every post, i think i started doing that last year when i was working on my thesis

 

[Haly]

Where's the Hatsune Miku skin?

She is literally Miku.

 

[zkylon]

they nerfed mikaels for that reason already tho

i don't think that's necessarily everything that's holding them back

ashy was really good in 2v1 meta which is dying now

varus just doesn't scale as well as kog

both are pretty ok in a normal environment tho, ashy is a bit weak i think but overall both are balanced

Where's the Hatsune Miku skin?

She is literally Miku.

default is already pretty miku

i love her

 

[brian!]

they nerfed mikaels for that reason already tho

i don't think that's necessarily everything that's holding them back

ashy was really good in 2v1 meta which is dying now

varus just doesn't scale as well as kog

both are pretty ok in a normal environment tho, ashy is a bit weak i think but overall both are balanced


default is already pretty miku

i love her

oh for sure, I just think michaels is the main thing because so much of their kit's power is placed on their ults, ppl haven't really stopped building it either
i dont think mobility champions are harder, i think they have more options, and not having those particular options makes a champion harder to play because you have less space

 

[scy]

Confirmed playing League makes you illiterate.

I blame the Facebooks and Tweeters.

 

[brian!]

my thesis was also unreadable but for different reasons

 

[Orochinagis]

Riot stop killing another support I care (nami)

back to what matters, sona skins:

T_T

Yay she got heir yellow hair again but damn at the detail downgrade.

 

[Achtius]

chinese sona turned into a brunette

 

[dimb]

I hope Sona still just spazzes around. That's like her defining feature.

 

[Kotetsu534]

Eve probably deserves these nerfs, but if they go through, I'll be sad

Spoiler

for a moment, then I'll go back to Xin Zhao.

. I cannot believe they would nerf Lee Sin and Eve but leave Elise untouched for Worlds, so I'm sure there's more changes to come on the PBE though.

 

[brian!]

im liking this Road to Worlds('s patch)

 

[CRS]

Now I can ignore Ranked for a while now.

 

[pigeon]

All these buffs and nerfs seem reasonable.

* Bummer for Tristana level 2 all-ins but she'll still be good, just not as powerful super early.
* Given that I was wrong and it turned out the Vel'koz changes were a buff I'm sad they're now not doing them.
* Looks like the design plan for Lee Sin is that his weakness is getting killed. Offense staying strong, defense losing a lot of steam. He'll have to rely on his mobility to stay alive which seems appropriate to me.
* They're missing Elise nerfs. Where are the Elise nerfs?

 

[brian!]

this is brokenshard on cw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWzsGD30nQ

 

[Pancakes]

Nami nerfs. Damn you Rito.

 

[Newt]

Nami nerfs. Damn you Rito.

But Sivir buffs!

Spoiler

HUNTRESS SIVIR