Jozrael

For sure we're on right now and playing . Drop us a line, and make sure you've added all of our accounts.

@Zeraph: If you do even a tiny bit of damage to someone, you mark them for 15 seconds.. If someone else gets the kill, you get an assist. If a tower/minion kills them, the most recent damage from a player (in the last 15 seconds) gets the kill.

Zeraph

Joz- hello? been sending you tells for the last several minutes. I'm sitting here listening to you guys on vent talking about me. I told you I don't have a mic set up. Ever since I built this computer last year my sound has been royally screwed and I haven't been able to talk on vent.

Jozrael

Ah zeraph you must've logged out of pvp.net chat.

If you don't think something is working properly, go to the chatroom part of your friends list (the right button). If you see 0 players in everything, you need to relog your client to be able to talk to anyone. They'll be fixing this bug soon.

Also, if you want to talk to us on vent without a mic, use comments .

Sorry that we missed you. I assume you still wanted to play with us: but when you are logged out of the chat, we can't see you to invite you to a game .

Zeraph

I didn't log; I could still see you. People still showed on my friend's list.

And actually I did have a comment thing up, "No mic" but it was a little later in the conversation and I think I have it on send silently.

Anyways thats ok, but it was frustrating.

Jozrael

Sorry . If you want to get my/our attention, right click our name and send a page. When you do so, have you want to say in your comment

Vaultboy

Arrrghh. Super frustrating. Had to uninstall and dl new client today. My conn is capped and internet is incredibly expensive where i stay, so I've actually paid like US$40 for the 4Gb spent on LoL in the last month. Pendragon and co need to find a way to FTP bloody patches.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

Ouch.

Is there any way I can help you with that?

And the old client switch to new client is a one time kinda deal.

Vaultboy

Nah, it just means no other dl's this month. I was just venting my frustration. I just hope that they find another way to update instead of through the installer, because then you can keep patches.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

well you can download a fully patched client up to the day that standalone was made. The last one was like a week ago, so you'd have to d/l the patches from then on, until they made a new standalone.

EDIT: Just found out that standalones cannot patch, so they are a very bad idea for someone in your situation xD

Lasereth

Somehow I've still managed to keep a positive win to loss ratio. This game is definitely growing on me. So far Cho'Gath, Fiddlesticks, and Soraka are the champs I keep playing as. BTW Cho and Fiddle together are a devastating lane combo. Dark wind + Rupture at level 1 is terrible for the opposing laners.

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Zeraph

I just had the biggest lawl game ever. Keep in mind this was a mid level game with summoners in their teens. I was actually the lead in kills and carrying the team as heimer and no deaths at all and a ton of assists. I wasn't even luring them into turrets or anything like that either. Was pretty amusing (and frustrating for how bad everyone else was doing).

I've been playing a bit with tarric (gem knight) recently and while I don't get many kills I notice that there's a much greater chance of my team getting an early win...which is like 300exp/ip I realized compared to 100ip/exp for a longer game/no surrender win. Does anyone know any good builds for him? He seems like he literally needs everything..AD, AP, hps, and mana. His recommended build feels like crap as he has almost no staying power vs good teams.

1. I usually go early mana regen, then hps, and mana, and AP and tend to stay away from melee in team fights unless their team sucks or if its for the coupe de gras. Which is a shame because his ult is melee based. Wish they'd change it. It drains mana way too quick and feels like crap unless the team is designed around it.

2. Also, So what item procs don't stack? For instance, I know Sheen, Lich Bane and Trinity Force proc's don't stack. But what about other items? I know boots don't, and their's diminishing returns with other move speed items past a certain point. I also know slows don't stack. Anything else?

Jozrael

Tbh I've seen some pros play Heimer lately: I guess me and most of the other competitive players just haven't been playing him right. He's still def not top tier, but at least somewhat viable.

Taric is insanely awesome. Definitely a competitive pick.

In terms of XP/IP, you probably got your first win of the day bonus on that game (roughly +150 to both). Winning early gives you like +10-15 IP I think.

I wouldn't go damage on Taric. Tank Taric is interesting, as is AP Taric. He's probably one of the best recipients of the golem buff of any champion. Most good teams get it for him often (since he's not a very fast jungler :P).

Taric's ult is -ridiculously- awesome. For a teamfight, the dps boost is insane (and the heal doesn't hurt either). But you definitely have to turn it off before it starts ticking hard (you can let it run an extra second or two with golem buff).

As for stacking items: You're correct with S/LB/TF, and the -movement speed- bonus of boots doesn't stack (so yes, only get one xD). MS has diminishing returns when it hits certain values, it's not item dependent. Slows do stack, up until a point.

Zeraph

Hmm, that's interesting. That bonus for the day thing is weird, I only sometimes seem to get it. I'm looking at my history for the last 3 days or so and I only have the bonus on 1 victory, the rest are 100exp/ip ish.

If they surrender we get bonus experience tho right?

Jozrael

Nope, just for winning quickly. Nothing special for surrender.

Lasereth

Taric is awesome but I think Soraka can be just as good if not better. Soraka now has 2 instant heals and a mana regen spell. Try laning with a good Soraka and you won't port back until you're 8 or 9.

I find Taric's ult good for healing more than anything. That heal during a team fight is crazy. I don't know, both are good but Soraka seems to yield more tangible results with the two insta-heals. Take the heal summoner spell and then you have 3 instant cast heals during a team fight which is ridiculous.

BTW blah @ Cho getting nerfed again. Oh well.

This patch is gonna change a lot methinx.

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Zeraph

So what's with the character rotation? It's been nearly a week and a half since we've had these 10. And now with the patch, I can't decide if I want them to change them or not since they reworked Ryze and I want to try the changes :P

Jozrael

This patch is gonna be awesome. Soraka is definitely as good as Taric: I think a tad OP right now. Her main strength isn't just keeping you alive in lane, it's letting you do crazy shit that push them to their tower and back and still be fine on hp/mana.

Cho getting 'nerfed again'? Wtfhax? It's been a joke that he's been buffed for like 7 patches in a row (slight exaggeration). Thank god for those rollbacks xD.

@Zeraph: No idea, but you'll notice no one's complaining haha. It's probably getting changed tomorrow, though.

And ryze is INSANELY AWESOME NOW. Buybuybuybuybuy.

Zeraph

1. BTW how does heimer's ult work exactly? It gives cd reduction to all his abilities right? So does that count toward the max 40% or is it an exception?

2. I wish there were more ways to fortify positions like heimers ability. But I mean something between a permanent turret or shroom and the very brief "wall" type abilities. Like I'd like to see corkies valkyre ability last for ~20seconds, anivias walls be passable(just super slow), but also last for ~35 seconds, have fear ward type sanctuary pots/wards at shop that your party could run to if it got into trouble, etc.

Jozrael

It counts towards the hardcap. Basically he only needs to get 20% to max out.

I personally dislike the passive gameplay that Heimer's turrets promote. I can't wait for his redesign :\.

I don't mind jester nests so much.

Zeraph

Wow, that's lame. Maybe I'm misremembering but doesn't the ult by the third point provide like 35% reduc? And the recommended item build has like 30% worth of CD reduc items in it. wtf. But maybe I'm misremembering.

I agree with the passive part. Maybe auto apply the upgrades/ult per point in turret skill (so by point 5 they come out red and fully upgraded) and make his ult teleport all his turrets to him (may need to lower their damage, but then they could increase theyre hps so they didn't die in one hit late game).

That's assuming they don't want to *completely* redesign him. Otherwise I can't see a way to make him much more mobile. But his ult definitely needs to be changed and turret hps needs to be higher by late game (maybe make them scale with heimer's hps or AP).

EDIT:
OMG har har, so funny. While the server is down and Amumu sad face is up if you hit up, down, left ,right, up, up, down, down (with arrow keys) it goes to Teemo's happy face and brings you to the login screen (can't actually login tho). Wonder what the purpose of this little code is; pretty amusing though, reminds me of old NES games.

ironpham

Ahhh, but I believe the old Konami code was up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right....I don't remember the a, b button combination though.

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SIGNATURE.

Zeraph

Apparently people have already started selling accounts :/

There was a level 30 on my team that was a complete newb and fed the other team nearly the entire game. This isn't normally too huge of a deal as you normally get at least one newb in random games..problem is the match making system gave the other team a legit lvl 30...that happened to be in the same lane...so you can guess how that turned out.

Jozrael

His ult gives 10/15/20% cd reduction. Recommended items are...recommended. Once you understand the game/hero, you're doing yourself a disservice by blindly following them and not seeing if there are superior items you can use in your build/teamcomp/counter to the enemy comp.

Heimer is getting a fairly big redesign. Enough that they still haven't figured out the half of it. That being said, like I said before, I don't think Heimer is super UP anymore, just that he takes a different style. He's certainly not top tier, but I don't think he's got his own little 'absolutely useless' category anymore.

And yea, the Riot code isn't quite the Konami code. They used it as their 'dev' password during patches for months. Basically, they'd turn on the servers without having the launcher update that, and manually enter with the code. Once we found out about it (like 1-2 months ago) they stopped using it for that xD. Now it's mostly used actually as a bugfixer, for people who encounter the Unavailable message when they shouldn't.

As a sidenote, the company they shipped their launcher out to sucks, and they're currently in the process of writing their very own .

By the by, I don't know if you noticed my off-topic post, but yea I'm putting LoL (and gaming in general) down for a bit. Gotta focus on school. I'll still swing by here to answer questions, and I'll prob be back to LoL at some point next year. You might've noticed I wasn't playing like 18+ hours a day anymore lately xD.

Happy LoLing

Zeraph

Yeah, I noticed youll be missed. Though I also have to admit its been nice playing in my own bracket :P Just finished a ~45minish game with 19/4/11! with katarina. Ahhh katarina, been itching to play her for awhile. Now that I finally have a handle on the game I don't wtf suck with her. But you are right, she's doesn't bring much to the table. She really only does well if your team is already doing well OR they have no CCers to stun you out of ult (in which case they prob arent doing well anyway).

I'm almost positive they don't but I figure I better ask just to be sure; Kat's bouncing blades or ult can't crit right? I woudn't think so but BB is one of the few abilites based on AtDmg and not AP so I'm not sure.

Jozrael

The only ability that can currently crit is Parrrley (but it is compensated by being the only dodgeable ability, not counting the new flash mechanic). Riot is slowly implementing quite a lot of atk-dmg based skills. I was going to be writing up a small thesis on that for them (on some balancing considerations) but I suppose it'll have to be later. Meh, that can wait.

Katarina MAY be due for a huge re-evaluation of her potential. Previously her ult, like Nunu, was just a big STUN ME button. Now, with the new cleanse functionality, I imagine that will be core on her (I'd imagine the mastery, too. It's worth giving up the offense/utility trees for). Katarinas ult can put out a crapton of dmg when it's not stopped, and now its not stoppable with cleanse >.

No one in council has commented on this yet, but I'm sure they'll get around to figuring it out sooner or later. I'd rather not have to break my self-imposed silence, and hopefully I'll check the forums less as a result xD.

Someone needs to mention in Phreak's Council Digest (another thing I ended up not being able to do T_T) that cardmaster was bitched about, and at length :P. Not sure why he omitted that thread.

I'm glad you're ownin face in your bracket . Keep it up too long and you'll start moving up, though xD.

Vaultboy

bleh, all this system downtime sucks. haven't been able to play whole week.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

Should be up by now. But yea, they had a LOT of stuff they needed to fix. They had patches, hotfixes, hardware that needed immediate replacement (and then followup work on that when it wasn't done perfect the first time).

And that's only what I know from browsing the forums, you guys might've had other ones too ;P.

On the plus side: CM is about to get focused on by Riot. Yay <3.

Vaultboy

Nope, still down. People are saying European IPs are blocked.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

Lemme see what I can round up in H&S.

EDIT: Right you are. Here is the the thread detailing this. There is a workaround on the second page, but as Jesse says, please backup that file before deleting it, and replace it when you are done.

Vaultboy

doesnt work. The launcher tells me that all updates are up to date, and asks whether I am connected to the internet. No amount of log-changing or tricks changes the status. i'm tired of lol

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Zeraph

I think they need to re-evaluate her killer instincts. The brief dodge is nice after shunpo but it is by far her weakest skill. The added damage passive part of it for each successive hit sucks since she is all about hit and run and burst. Perhaps if they made it so that for every second she *doesnt* attack she builds up extra damage.

Vaultboy

pfft. just did a complete reinstall using the latest installer. Still says Server Unavailable "Are you Connected to the Interent" (sic), but installs all updates.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

@Vaultboy: Use the Knowledge Database or the Help&Support forums to solve particular bugs. That one has an almost 100% fix with the arrow-code. (UP DOWN etc.) I'm sorry that it's not working out well for you, and I agree LoL is not as stable as it could/should be. On the plus side, it should get far more stable over time :P.

As for Kat, the Killer/Shunpo combo is AWESOME, as you said. I agree that it does not synergize perfectly with her Q. That being said, all the anti-healing skills got a major buff as of late, so perhaps it is better and I just haven't seen it in action.

But yea, Katarina comes up fairly often in high level play where she needs to be tweaked somehow. Not majorly redone like some heroes, just some tweaks here and there.

Vaultboy

Its fixed, for some unknown reason. Yesterday the arrows started working, and now its status is online again from startup. Nothing in the help forum mentioning a fix. The Store is black though.

On the plus side, a 40 minute game of LoL used to eat about 16Mb, now its down to 10. Hopefully soon they'll get it down to 3Mb, like Dota.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Jozrael

Wow, I didn't realize it ate that much of your bandwith. When I go back I'll try to talk to the devs about this.

Keep in mind they use vastly different netcode. DotA was P2P, LoL is client server. I'm not sure how either was specifically implemented, but obviously DotA's was superior for your particular concerns (minimizing bandwith).

(Disclaimer: I may have used one or several improper terminologies in the above post :P).

Vaultboy

Yeah, several of my friends dont play LoL purely because they play over 3G/HSPDA (ADSL is not an option for a vareity of reasons), but HSPDA bandwith is super-expensive, so 16Mb a game is unacceptable. I'm not that concerned, since I don't have a bandwith-heavy console game at the moment, or the time to play much.

What i like about LoL is that even with a latency of 300, I get great gameplay. With dota it was impossible to play on an international server - and even on a local server you struggled when pining > 100. The same goes for console games: I only ever play with local guys for the same reason.

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"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Lasereth

Well I played Nasus and Tryndamere for the first time this past weekend and good god. I see why some champions are considered in different tiers now. As Nasus, SS every minion you can find, buy a bloodthirster and stark's and BF sword, GG. Walk into a team fight, watch your HP plummet, but then all of a sudden it's going back up. Fast. Critting people for 1/3 of their life bar everytime SS is up is amazing. I really like him.

Tryndamere took a practice match to get used to but the first normal game I played with him I went 18-1-15. This guy is sick. I've never seen DPS like this before, not even from Yi or Jax. Phantom Dancer + Infinity Edge and holy jesus...every attack is hitting for 500-750. Dropping same level champs in 4 hits is freaking hilarious. If the timing is right, and if your team sets up the fight correctly, Trynd can single handedly destroy the entire enemy team. I love this guy.

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Zeraph

Yar, nasus has always been good. I actually got bored with him fairly quickly though for some reason even though he is basically my perfect character and the one I have always done best with. The new tryn is amazing. I can't wait to try him out. If your vs a competent tryn you *must* keep him CC'd and because of his invuln ult you basically have to wait and focus fire him last. This makes him almost an odd hybrid of tank-DPS/carry. He is Yi on steroids (i.e. useful). He obviously cant run down stragglers like Yi but his ult is 10x more useful in a competitive team fight. I have already seen it single handedly win several (because the team doesn't realize he poped his ult and wastes several valuable seconds beating on him).

My main prob with anti heal so far is that heal itself is too weak late game. I think all heals actually need a bit better AP ratios and slightly higher bases as well. I'd also give character based anti heal skills twice the dura of items like executioner. Seems kind of weak that you can get that same dang thing for ~1400 (plus crit plus lifesteal plus DoT). Sometimes I even get that on teemo for the lawls even when they don't have healers, cause I almost always get 1 or 2 kills from the extra dot from it.

I actually like playing chars like soraka and taric but I feel too weak end game. Early to mid game its great and awesome. But late I feel nothing more than a regen battery and near useless in the deciding team fights (of course, part of that I know is my play style, but I think the lack of sorakas and tarics speaks for itself).

So how does exp/ip work with ATs/premades? I was just playing a game with warstriker and didn't notice the normal -35% part but the numbers did seem low (86/64) so I'm wondering if they just don't show the -35% part anymore and it still applies or did they take away the exp/ip penalty of AT games?

Jozrael

Okiez, first up: My experience with the game is becoming slightly dated since I haven't played in several weeks. I mean, it's not like I'm totally clueless, but all I have to go on for new changes are patch notes, Council forum access, and intuition. It's pretty good, but not as good as actually playing the game.

Nasus is silly good. When playing against a Nasus, you HAVE to disrupt him. If you let him farm his SS to ridiculous levels it's GG. That being said, this is not very important right now as high Elo games are fast and furious in the current metagame. Most are over / decided by 15-20 minutes this patch. The pushing meta got totally revived as of late.

The real deal with Nasus is how gamebreaking his ult is in a teamfight. Tank him out (imo it's much better than going all those DPS items, since SS is item-independent. It obviously is better with items, but it gets almost as good when you're going tank, giving you the best synergy of invincibility plus ridiculous damage. Also with his the damage from his ult being item independent, it gives him crazy offense, and you itemize his defense, making the perfect hybrid) and own.

I haven't played the new Tryndamere, but *psst* there's some nerfs coming for him in the near future (next major patch). The next patch is gonna be awesometastic, almost as great as this one was for improving the meta. Long story short, yes, he destroys right now .

@Zeraph: Heal vs anti-heal is a very complicated meta problem to solve. Just last patch, healing was OP (at least in high tier games). You saw a Taric AND Soraka in most all competitive teams. People just didn't die; heal was far OP, even endgame. Now, this is where what I mentioned with my knowledge becoming dated comes into play: I'm not there to comment on the prevalence (or not) of S/T in high Elo play right now, cuz I'm not there ^^. But I don't hear people complaining that heal was overnerfed in Council, so I'm inclined to think that it's not yet a problem.


As for XP/IP: There never was nor will be a penalty for premaking. The 'penalty' for premaking is an artifical, temporary boost to your effective Elo. A 5 man premade has a HUGE boost to it's Elo, so if you're matched against solo queues, they will individually be much stronger players than you. As it is, 5 man premades statistically lose right now (they have like 40-45% chance to win from the matchmaker's point of view) because of all the QQ on the forums about solo v premade. MM 2.0 should fix a large part of these problems.

The penalty you were talking about comes from practice games. All practice games provide a -35% XP/IP gain. The teams must also be balanced (bots count the same as humans). This means you vs 5 bots earns you 0 XP/IP, but you vs 1 bot earns you 65%.

Also, once you reach level 11/12 (I forget which), you are only allowed 4 practice games per day. After 4, you receive 0% XP/IP.

86/64 seems pretty average for a nonboosted loss in normal games.

Zeraph

Interesting, I could have *sworn* I saw -35% a few weeks ago for premades. Thanks for clearing that up.

What does Elo stand for? I've asked this before and never gotten a straight answer With this talk of councils and whatnot sounds like some conspiracy lol

*All* else being equal, which should I go for, armor or magic resist?

Oh, and is there some exp hack? If I suspect someone is hacking, is there anything I can do? I was in this game yesterday were a tristana would go missing from the map (said he was jungling) then come back with several levels. He/she got to level 18 somewhere around the ~20 minute mark when everyone else was still lvls 9, 10, and 11 (BOTH teams). Everyone was like, wtf? She wasn't fed, only had 3 or 4 kills at the time, didn't have jungling items, etc. I've never seen anyone level anywhere close to that fast.