Jozrael

Elo = your invisible rating. You start with, I believe, 1200 or so. You gain Elo when you win, and lose it when you lose. A new account gains and loses a lot of Elo per game so the system can quickly find their rating. If you make an 'upset' (You beat a team that had a higher Elo rating than you), you earn more, and they lose more.

Council = one of the 4 community 'colored' names on the forums. Adjudicators (blue) were just in beta before July 14th. I missed by less than a week . Emissaries (green) are specifically tasked with helping the new player experience. They helped Riot write the tutorial, and wrote some other guides. They're very few in number and mostly idle right now; Riot will be retasking them soon. Council (yellow) have one or more of the following attributes: have a very very high Elo/are otherwise considered fantastic at the game, are or were part of an eSports backed team, run a league/other eSports function that's picking up LoL, or were invited by Riot/the Council. I'm not quite #1 quality, even back when I was top 200, but I hit #2 and #4. Wrenchmen (orange) are people who've spent a good deal of time helping out in the H&S forum. I'm one of these as well.

Keep in mind it's not just armor/MR, you also have to consider HP stacking (which, while more expensive, counters both types of damage). There is no one answer for armor magic resist, sorry. It's just silly to think you can reduce it to one or the other for even a general rule. It depends on your character, and your opponents.

There are currently no known 'hacks' for LoL. Bugs/exploits, there's one or two floating around. Are you somewhat exaggerating or are those numbers legit? 18 by 20 is pretty excessive. It is very possible to do a mixture of jungle and laning with certain chars, that is VERY potent. Basically, in between waves Trist rocket jumps her wraith camp, and picks up free gold/xp. It's very popular with certain champs. If he's grabbing runes, even more so. Other factors: they could've had someone getting them dragon (especially if she didn't help), towers, idk. There's a bunch of factors; I highly doubt it was a hack.

That being said, my eyes have bugged out a couple times too when the enemy solo just levels ungodly fast. I notice it most often with tryndamere when he combos solo mid with jungling.

Zeraph

What does Elo stand for? I mean, why call it elo and not abc?

I'm not exaggerating, the only thing I'm not as certain of is the exact time she reached 18. I know it was before the surrender point though because we ended up surrendering at about 30 minutes and she had been 18 well before surrendering was possible (it was so noticable because it was what turned the game around for their team and made us want to surrender). They had a zilean, but of course zilean, taking down towers, dragon and such helps their entire team, and she was just as far above her own team as she was above ours.

Oh I just reread what you were saying, yeah I guess that could have helped if she didn't leave her lane/solo jungle routine for dragon and such. Still seems wicked fast. And if its not a hack, I want to figure out the exact strategy for it so I can do it too For a DPS carry to be 8 levels above everyone else is a huge advantage. Especially since their own team didn't seem to take much of a hit in exp/team support.

Oh also, they weren't a premade nor was my own team, we were all mostly teens to low twenties (yay I hit 21) summoners and playing at about that level. Which is another thing that made me doubt some advanced strategy. So if it was legit she seemed to pull it off by herself.

Lasereth

I've seen a Warwick on my team level that fast. He was 18 when we were 10-11. He went 22-2-15 that match and was killing 3 enemy champs solo before they could retreat. He had like 17,000 gold earned that match so you can imagine his DPS.

---------- Post added at 02:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:18 PM ----------

BTW Fiddlesticks + Soraka laning together are DEATH <level 10. I was something like 6-0 before 10. We had 1st turret down at level 6, 2nd turret at 25% HP before level 10. We ended up losing because we stopped pushing lanes and began ganking and got carried away but good god. They traded lanes constantly -- Trynd, Rammus, Alistar, Soraka, it didn't matter who they threw at us, we had no trouble holding them off. Soraka as a lane partner is simply sick early game.

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

Jozrael

Elo <3.

I imagine he took the XP masteries, quints, and Zilean passive, and jungle/laned. His team got dragon every time it was up (and let him lane). Towers and kills round out the board (unless they got a reaaaaaaally early Baron, but I guess you would've mentioned).

And yes, Soraka is so good earlygame. :s. I'm not sure I like the way EC is changing the game: it's not out early enough to stop her earlygame DOMINANCE, but it shuts down any healing so utterly lategame.

Lasereth

Yeah no joke. I mean hell it's not too bad of a weapon to begin with but now it's a must for DPSers against any healers. Just right click on everyone during a fight.

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

Jozrael

EC was terribad before its buff; now its ehhh in some situations and dismantles healers in others. Not sure how Riot is going to approach it going forward.

Vaultboy

Lasereth, I think fiddlesticks + amumu/gang/nunu = anal rape if they ulti together. I've been in games (as one of them) where we've taken down 5 heroes if we time it right.

On another note, I think nunu is even more badass than nasus, simply because he requires zero skill to pwn with. With Nasus you need to learn to lasthit and item properly (to maximise that SS hit), but nunu is so easy I get bored.

But nasus in ulti form is terrifying. My cousin plays nasus and his runes are all crit chance and cooldown. He starts ( i think) with almost 15% crit chance, so you can imagine lategame he rapes face with 800+ crits and insane dps.

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

Lasereth

Yeah I usually do + damage as Nasus because Siphoning Strike is based on damage, and as far as I know, can't crit. A Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge on him is hilarious. SS drops them by 1/3 or even half their HP in one hit.

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

Zeraph

BTW tiamat (gives splash attack, dmg, regen, and armor i think? possibly lifesteal? I've only tried it a couple times), is a really underrated item, and while not great for hero killing (but not bad either) is a great first pick for many characters (I like ranged characters the most with it) because it allows you to get soooo many more minion kills its practically a free item after 15-20 minutes. My only hesitancy in taking it every time is how fast most games are decided now. And it doesn't offer as much as say malady would to a character like twitch. Although, apparently his ult works with it and makes it nice, but since he's such a roamer it makes it more of a borderline item again for him. I plan on trying it with tristana for some insane early laning power.

Lasereth

Man this game pisses me off like no other. Losing is one of the worst experiences I've had in videogames while winning is one of the best. Sometimes if we lose a close game I wanna uninstall the SOB right then and there, but then the next day I want to play it again. I'm really starting to get irked at how matches are single handedly lost by 1 player though. Yesterday I had a Twitch on my team, Summoner level 18. He used Ambush 4 times before the minions spawned at bottom and had 0 mana when the minions got there. Then he died at level 2 when he went through the river to try and ambush with no mana.

After dying, he came back to bottom lane after 5 straight minutes of sitting at the fountain. Now he was level 2. I was level 7, enemy laners were both 6. Of course they raped him as soon as he got near them.

We lost our turret soon after and he starts calling everyone fat niggers. How do people like this get paired with me??????? BTW first item he bought was Amp tome with no potions.

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

Zeraph

Hah, ya. I'm somewhat with you. I'm a little more easy going though and usually don't mind losing (hey, lowers my elo score which I kind of like :P).

EDIT above, turns out tiamat only splashes the 40ish damage the weapons gives. So it doesn't scale as well as I thought.

Zeraph

What's with the match making system the last 3 or 4 days? I'm getting paired with much lower skilled people vs the opponent team having all the higher skilled people. I'm carrying the team like, every time now and I keep losing. Used to win random solo queues about 2/3s of the time, now the ratio is more like I'm *losing* 3/4s of the time. Doesn't matter how well I do, I still often end with kills in the teens but my team loses.

Anyways, I don't recall it in the patch notes but did they implement that new match making system yet or have I just gotten a string of bad luck? What I really don't get is how all these losses haven't dropped my elo score so low I haven't been dropped down some brackets (and started seeing wimpier teams).

I know I know, ironic post coming after that last one.

Vaultboy

Just bad luck, i reckon. Some days I go on 8-match winning streaks, then on losing streaks. It comes down to being paired with high ELO players that carry wins, then ELO players being carried to wins. You can clearly see the difference: its fine when someone is just having a bad day, but when their understanding of team gameplay sucks, they have clearly been carried above their true ability.

What i would also like is for the matchmaker to match leavers with other leavers, and not with me.

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

YaWhateva

I've been seeing the same thing lately, before my team would be all about my skill level but lately I've been getting people who are absolutely terrible and a few times the opposing team's lowest level was in the mid 20's. What is that? I hardly have time to play so I'm like level 12 and my teammates are all in the single digit level and the opposing team is in the mid 20's. One time though my team was in the late teens, and the highest level of the other team was 6. The match was over nearly instantly, it's getting kind of ridiculous.

__________________
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

Jozrael

Disclaimer: My personal experience with the game is stale; several weeks out of date. I'm still quite fresh on current Council/forum activity though, so my word isn't useless .

Wow I've missed this thread for too long @_@:

@Vault 127: No way. AoE was king last metagame iteration. Cleanse is king now. When the pendulum swings back a bit and anti-CC is nerfed a bit (maybe cleanse doesn't do such a good job at reducing magic dmg, if at all? We're hounding them on Council to fix Cleanse atm) AoE will be much more viable.

Nasus rapes Nunu on Summoner's Rift. Nasus is still god tier, whereas Nunu is mid tier. On TT, Nunu may easily outpower Nasus. Then again, this is at high Elo: you are correct that it takes less skill to roll with Nunu. Nasus' ulti is the main cause of his imbaness. I'm pretty sure I've gone into this before, but here is the reason Nasus is OP: Most champions have to choose between itemizing defense or offense, making tradeoffs. Nasus' offensive power is almost ENTIRELY item-independent: his SS and ult damage is based off non-item sources primarily. This means Nasus can itemize pure defense, making him a great tank, and still pack a super punch. This will be getting nerfed, unfortunately not soon enough.

@Lasereth 128: A SS can crit, but the extra dmg from SS is not critted. I.e.: If a normal hit does 100, and a SS does 300: a crit will do 200, and a SS crit will do 400. That being said, if you're not going pure tank Nasus adding crit is a great way to skyrocket your SS damage, even if the SS isn't multipled. Crit is crit xD. I have yet to achieve my goal of pure one-shotting someone with a SS crit, but I've done over 90% of their hp in one hit .

@Zeraph 129: Tiamat was considered UP before: it does give great all around stats, but doesn't excel in any one area (besides giving farm-shitty characters some viability there). I'd say it's a poor item choice on the large majority of champions: you hit the nail on the head that with games ending quicker, this is even more amplified. That being said, it's disgustingly awesome in some situations: I've seen Twitch, Jax, and others absolutely faceroll so many times when a team clusters too much in a teamfight.

@Lasereth 130: Unfortunately, it's a critical weakness of the genre that the weakest link often determines games. LoL both enhances and protects against this effect: death streaks and some other nifty mechanics make a feeder stop helping the other team nearly as much as DotA/HoN. However, LoL has far less capacity for 'supercarries', allowing you to ignore even multiple feeders on your team (see: Terrorblade / PA popping out of the jungle at 30-40 minutes in DotA and 1v5ing the enemy team :P). Rage afflicts everyone in LoL when you have an 'unjust loss', given to you entirely by poor play from a teammate. I don't mind losing close, good games, though, honest. They're the most fun I've ever had in any game, win or lose (though obviously winning is best ;D).

@Zeraph 131: Not quite. Tiamat splashes a percentage of your attack damage, so it does scale (it's just not 1:1). I believe it is actually roughly 20-40% of your attack damage that is splashed, though. It's been awhile since I examined the item, hence the large ambiguity.

@Zeraph 132: Bad luck. MM 2.0 is still quite a ways off , there's been no big changes lately. Luck has such a huge part to play in matchmaking just because of the sheer amount of human variance it can't account for. Premaking averages this out a TON, as you know. Also, your Elo dropping (when you don't premake) is not always a good thing, especially with bad luck. The poor players have almost as much of a chance to be on your team :P.

@Vaultboy 133: Very soon more harsh anti-leaving measures are going to be implemented (the CSS ones), and hopefully shortly thereafter the leaver/leaver queueing will be implemented (I know it's in MM 2.0, but hopefully Zileas will speed its entry with all the leaves going to be handed out once CSS leaving matters :P).

@YaWhateva 134: If your Elo hasn't climbed too much (as you said you haven't had enough time to play, so this is definitely the most likely case), you're probably seeing newb island premades. When people normally sheltered by newb island premake, they get kicked out into 12+ play, often with disastrous results. MM 2.0 solves this handily (or so Zileas claims).

Zeraph

Thanks for answering so many questions. I guess I've been pretty lucky up until now then, never had such a bad streak.

So with the new heavy penalties for leavers, will there be some kind of safeguard for disconnects? I'd really hate to get DC'd, get locked out for the portion of the game, AND get a leaver mark or whatever they're going to do. Granted, I see their problem as if they don't penalize DCs then the leavers will just pull their modem...Thanks goodness I have a decent connection.

Jozrael

The big change is CSS leaving. Basically, if you're in champion select screen (CSS), and you leave, you get a leaver mark the same as if you left during a game.

They're not changing the ingame system at all: disconnects won't punish you unless you still aren't back by the time the game ends. (Unfortunate if you JUST disconnected, though :P)

Zeraph

lawl omg, the new hero nidale is amaaazzzing. She has almost everything. AoE, sniper attack, traps, a heal *and* attk speed buff! She's really quick, and her cougar abilites don't cost any mana! Not even to shapeshift! Only thing she lacks is CC. Basically she went back in time and raped Udyrs essence. I still have a lot to learn though as she literally has 6 abilities, not to mention learning item builds. She's odd cause she needs standard carry items but she runs out of mana easily too, even with a chalice and really needs that mana in human form.

Despite all that though, she's not particularly good at ganking, can't go all godmode like nasus, is mostly good at just finishing, and pushing, and utility. A very solid hero, hopefully she won't get nurfed. I actually don't think she needs it.

Vaultboy

What i dislike a bit is that her two forms require completely different styles of play, possibly items too. I dislike the cougar form at present. Only useful for runing early.

I would have preferred her to have a slow skill (like bambi in dota) in human form, to align with the brush movement skill in cougar.

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

highdro69

Joz, do you know if passive poisons like teemo's and twitch's will proc off a Tiamat?

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Lasereth

Right now I'm thinking Trinity Force, Guinsoo's Rageblade, Boots of Swiftness or Merc treads on Nidalee. She's fun as hell to play. Won a match last night as her, first normal game with her, had a positive K : D also. Her cougar form can put out some decent damage if you have a sheen type weapon on her. R and then QWE combo is pretty brutal, especially if they're low.

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

Zeraph

High- No it doesn't, I've tested it. Would be awesome sauce if it did :P

Vault- you must be doing something wrong with her cougar form then. Make sure you have sheen and eventually get either lichbane (if ap) or triforce if dps. Her cougar form abilities go off extremely quickly, my pounce is at 2.7 seconds. The cougar's Q can hit for crazy amounts if the champ is at low health, and the E cougar's AoE is pretty good. Pounce and the E AoE both hit for around 300 (both AoE) by 18 without any AP bonus. And both are on very short cool downs. Q can hit for even more. But like I was saying last night, she's not a true carry, so her cougar form isn't (and shouldn't) perform like Yi or something. And if they gave her a CC she'd be OP I think. She can already chase really well (use pounce while chasing even if you're not hitting them).

You should generally open in human form, spear, trap (since it has such a long placement), throw the heal on for speed, then cougar for burst dps, then back to human usually. I mean, the cougar form burst dps is like, ~1000 damage (2/3s AoE) before armor (not including sheen procs or auto attack dmg!) on like an ~5sec cooldown essentially. How is that not a good ult? The only drawback of course is that you have to go into melee and she isn't very tough.

Laserath- instead of Gunsoo's rageblade you should think about Nashoor's tooth. It's quite nice for her and has some mana regen. Very nice to build from after meliki pendant which I think is the best 1st item to get on her. I'm toying with even getting both, regardless of build.

Possibly, meliki, sheen/boots, nashors, then maybe rageblade. I know that doesn't seem optimal from a sheen/cougar point but it just seems to work with her. Not sure why. Then lichbane and rylais or triforce later of course.

Jozrael

Yea, I've been hearing fabulous things about Nidalee.

Tiamat doesn't splashes any effects; just straight up auto-attack damage.

And wow. I realize how outdated my experience is fast becoming by Zeraph's last paragraph . I can't comment on an optimal build at all T_T. Here's hoping I can come back sooner rather than later.

Zeraph

joz Isn't the semester over? What's holding you back?

edit: yikes. Just had the worst matchmaking experience ever. Them: all upper 20s literally 28s, 29s. Us: Me (24), a 2, 3, 5, and some low teen. And these weren't sucky high summoners and good low level summoners no, they played their level. It was over in 20 minutes. Total rape. My worst game ever. Didnt even get 1 kill. It paired us in like 30 seconds. It couldn't wait another 10 and give us a more appropriate match up? WTF?

Jozrael

Most probable explanation: Your team was a 4-man premade + you, kicking them out of newb island. The other team was all very medicore to bad level 30s/had had severe loss streaks/other human variance.

I mean, either that or an actual MM bug (which does happen, though rare). If you think it was too extreme a case, post it in the 'give me bad matchmaking examples' thread Zileas posted, with as much detail as you can (players in the game, time it happened and time zone, etc.) Maybe you'll uncover a bug :3. That's happened half a dozen times in that thread, and the MM code has improved as a direct result.

And I don't know when I'll have the time. I'm not home yet, and when I do there's lots of family issues going on (gpa with cancer, etc.).

Zeraph

Sorry to hear

Vaultboy

Ye Joz, sorry to hear about that. I know that psychologically it can be very draining.

Zeraph: I'm still not convinced by Nidalee, despite your 12-4 stats at one time. Maybe she's just not my style.

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

highdro69

Just tried my first hand at AP Sion, and I don't like it. The AOE dmg is nice for farming, and against a caster stacked team, I could see the shield being very nice, but I suppose I just prefer to be a head bustin' DPS Sion (infinity edge, black cleaver, last whisper, etc..)

@MM System. I don't think it likes my friends. Whenever I play solo, I 9/10 win, handsomely, going like 14-2-15. But when I'm doing AT with some friends, we 9/10 lose. But when they play without me, they seem to have a 50/50 chance of a win. I can understand my ELO putting me against crappy players, but if I've got such a "low ELO," wouldn't I usually get destroyed in my solo games as well? I dunno, you guys seem to have some better insight into the match making system than I do, was hoping for some solice hehe.

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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Jozrael

Well, if you're playing big premades (5 man especially), you get a boost to your effective Elo, meaning you face much tougher opponents. Also, if any of you guys have big differences in your Elos, the anti-smurf mechanic kicks in. Basically the lower player gets a several hundred point boost to their Elo (because the matchmaker doesn't want to give a team the capability to tank their Elo with smurfs for easy wins). This means your average Elo is WAY higher than it should be, and generally you get stomped. If you play enough of these games, your Elo will drop to the point where you are underrated. When you go to play solo queue, you get much easier games than you should be (90% win ratio is unheard of except at the very top .5% of players, so matchmaking definitely has you misjudged).

Thanks for the well wishes. I liked AP Sion when he was FotW, didn't play him too much afterwards. Never played phys Sion.

Lasereth

Still loving Nidalee. Even if I lose, I always have a good score as her. Her heal heals for a ton and is a great constant buff. The cougar form is fun too. She is really squishy though.

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

Vaultboy

Just played as Taric (probably the worst voice-acting evar, but I like him a lot), and laned with Nidalee. We pushed our lane so easily - could stay out and recall when my tp cd'd. We also had Mundo and Soraka (and Ashe), and just outleveled our opponents and pushed at the end. They had better heroes, but non of us fed and we controlled the game. Pretty boring stuff. Riot needs to find beter ways to kill heal. It reminded me of playing against Omni and Bambi.

Zeraph

Laserath- what do you mean by she heals a ton? I've seen a few people say this but her heal is the worse single target in the game (not by a lot but still). Or wait, actually is it? I can't remember tarics atm (but his heals himself too), either way, its at least the same and I don't see any Nidalee heal centric character builds in the future.

But yeah, she is oddly squishy even with some defensive items. In a game I was doing quite well in, I was easily above the enemy gangplank and he was by himself. I thought, easy kill! Ran up, and crit crit (he didn't even use his ult)..wtf there goes almost all my life...it was a close fight, I almost got him. But his parrley crit the shit out of me and got me before I could even shift and heal. She's a good character but I think that rightt here proves she is a hybrid and not a true carry or gank character and not in need of a nerf.

Vault- Did they use executioners calling (or called something like that). That right there is already a very good mechanic to stop healing during fights. Sounds like you faced newbs. Its a cheap item, like ~1400, (this is all just off the top of my head) and gives crit, lifesteal, a 50 point dot, and 60% less heals on target for 12 seconds! Plenty of anti heal. Anytime I see a competent healer in game I get that item on almost any of my characters. Early game the dot plus debuff almost completely negates healing received on the character im focusing. And that's only from hitting them once on an auto attack. Don't even have to activate it...Late game, frankly heals just don't mean as much (cause of the crazy burst dps and stuns possible) and the percentage part of the debuff scales well anyway.

Redjake

Nothing is as satisfying as building a fully-Feast-stacked Cho'gath with lots of HP and armor. You just move around like a huge fat pig and eat everything in your path. My last match I was taking on turrets by myself, even with Cho'gath's non-existent turret-buster abilities. The turret would take down less than one tick of HP per hit hahahaha.

Cho'gath gets fucking huge!!!!!!!!!

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Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Zeraph

Cho is a beast.

In other news I just had a great game with fiddlesticks. There was a ~45 second period that belonged in an action movie were the henchmen come at the hero one by one cause I solo'd there entire team and lol'd

Zeraph

Any solid item builds for shaco? I normally thought sheen was a must have early item but now I'm not so sure. I just played a game against a really really good shaco who said trinity force cancels shaco's passive 20% bonus damage from behind. I forgot to ask if that applied to sheen as well but I assume it does as he didnt bother with sheen early game. He basically just built him all out DPS. Know anything about that?

Vaultboy

Hmm, I finally figured how to make nidalee work for me. I go:

Catalyst > Rod of ages
Sheen > Trinity force
and a third item depending on the matchup. I can go rageblade, veil, executioner, or lichbane, depending. Sofar the results have been good.

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

Lasereth

You act like you have to modify her build to make her a healer. Just buy the same old AP hybrid build with trinity force and whatever else you want and her heal still heals for a lot. I checked it and her heal heals for much more than Kayle's, about the same as Taric's, and very slightly worse than Soraka's. Taric and Soraka are pure healers. Nidalee's heal healing for 5-10 less than pure healers is pretty good if you ask me!! Plus it's on a very short cool down. The cooldown is much better than Kayle and Taric's heal, and about the same as Soraka's. Plus her heal also gives you huge attack speed bonus. Not bad for a hybrid heal that doesn't even have to be built different than her trinity build!

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

Zeraph

Are you sure Kayle can heal? I'm not a kayle player at all, but looking over his abilities I don't see a heal skill. Also I wouldn't consider there to be any pure healers in this game. Soraka the most healerish ya, but she's not a horrible mage either. Her silence is pretty nice (silences for 3.5secs and does a decent amount of damage) and she has one of the best aoes in the game when you consider its cooldown (just under 3secs with only a little CD reduc). Once or twice for fun I've tried playing her offensively, and while I wouldn't recommend it (not nice taking kills from carries, won't work in truly skilled games) I've lead the team in killing blows with her. Taric can be a tank or a melee beast as well as a decent healer in skilled hands.

Anyways, you'd know more about it than I having played the healer champs more. But I have played a dozen games with taric and soraka and I have a much, much easier time keeping my team up with those two than nidalee. If I had to chose basing a team around a good soraka, taric, or nidalee, I'd pick soraka or taric everytime. I <3 nidalee but I am just not seeing the support numbers you are.

vault- glad to see you've found something that works. Keep in mind triforce and lichbane buffs don't stack.

I did some testing with shaco and got mixed results. Somehow I was occasionally getting the same damage whether I was behind something or not. It seems like there might be an occasional bug with his 25% passive. Sheen and triforce I don't think affected it but not sure.

Also, when he uses his ult, does his mirror image receive and apply all the bonuses from passives like bloodrazer? so essentially I get 8% health in magic damage from bloodrazor if my clone is out right?

I tried building shaco with some attack speed and more straight up carry type build and it worked pretty dang well. I just chew through people so much easier. I really thought speed and crit and such would be more of a waste than damage since those stats don't help his deceive skill, but now I'm finding that skill is more useful for position and escape than damage. Still good but his clone seems to be best, then shank, then deceive, then jacks. Wish they'd buff that. Make it so only 1 can be out at a time so they can have more immediate combat usefulness. I love the idea but they just generally suck right now.

Jozrael

In comp games, heroes aren't really built to be healers. Taric is an aura bitch, and Soraka has far more utility than her Q. She buffs single target armor, grants earlygame mana, silences, a great aoe with magic resist debuffs. Only her ult makes her more healery.

If you look at DotA, they mostly kept this theme. Dazzle and Omni for example: neither was a healer, but a hybrid that filled many roles at once. This is simply because straight out heroes are borrrring :P

And yes, Kayle can heal. Her W skill gives 10% bonus movespeed and a minor heal. At various times its interacted with Vengeance, but I don't think it has any correlation atm. I can't say with certainty though .

Shaco crits just fine with Sheen and Trinity Force: just keep in mind that THEIR damage is not amplified by his skill (they don't crit).

And yes...Shaco receives EVERY item effect. Its gross. His boxes were nerfed hard because of nests. Shaco players would hide 6 stacks of them, then lure opponents into them for absolute wtfkerpwn rape. And if they were in brush, there was nothing you could do about them.

I personally agree they need a minor survivability buff.

Zeraph

Ok, but does sheen add my original base damage or my damage after my items are taken into affect? I'd think the former and that seems to correlate with my observations but the wording is confusing as under stats panel items are included in base damage.

So if that was confusing:
base, no items: damage-100 + sheen I do 200 damage right?
base dmg-100, + 50 from item, + sheen, do I do 300 or 250?

This is not taking into account shaco's deceive (I get that part; its additive not multiplitive when criting)