Zeraph

I've always loved casters the best but liked playing them the least. I'm fine that they aren't primary carries and don't scale quite the same as Yi or Tryn or Trist or Kat, but my main annoyance with most of them is that they are very horrible farmers early game.

Sure late game they are great, but who isn't by then? Annie does pretty decently with the mana back on her nuke but she usually then has to save her energize for ganks/counter. Ryze I've been experimenting with, I tried going all out farming, you'd think he'd be great, and I thought I was doing well too. Then I looked at our scores at the end and trynd had triple my minions kills >< Last hits are hard on casters cause theyre projectile auto attack flies so slowly and they can't spam their abilities early game.

Is it just me or does it seem like casters should be able to farm better? Besides the rare exception like Karthus anyway casters are the worst early game farmers.

YaWhateva

I think Annie is an amazing farmer but yeah some of the other casters are terrible at farming.

__________________
“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!"

Zeraph

I got some mana regen runes and am loving em. Since my favorite characters to play are champs like shaco, tristana, twitch, nasus, etc. who need mana but not mana items, and where it really sucks to waste an item slot on a regen item, the mana runes really solve that resource problem. I didn't go all out like laserath, just seals, but theyre quite nice. Also super cheap, only 205 IP per! I've got 6 so far, thinking of going all 9 + quints.

But not sure about the quints. Move speed isn't noticeable, nor is experience or gold really, health is nice early game but I *rarely* die early game anyway. Quints are a tough call as I feel I should take one of the ones that are unique (exp, gold, death pen, etc).

Zeraph

After some more practice on farming with casters I've come to the conclusion that most casters are actually decent to good farmers, its just ryze apparently that's all around horrible. I really can't get him to shine, and I can polish almost any character. Nor have I ever seen a good ryze.

Its pretty ironic since he's supposed to be the assassin of the casters yet annie and veigar have much better burst *and* team utility with their aoe stuns.

Spell flux needs to bounce 1 to 3 more times. When ult is active rune prison should aoe prison (for 65% of duration) not just damage. And all three normal abilities need their early cooldowns low skill point areas reduced, not what they end up at, that can stay the same.

Jozrael

I feel Ryze can be a good farmer depending on how you build him. Maxing E first improves his farm if you know how to weaken the creeps, maxing his W first is best for teamfights, and maxing his Q first is best for harassing in lane (great damage per mana cost).

Zeraph

I know what you mean about E, I've tried doing it that way and will at best get 2 minion kills with it(usually 1, while almost getting another), very rarely 3* but compare that to fiddle, who brings great CC to the table, AND with one spell, dark winds, can farm and harass better...point 1 dark winds does more base damage and silences, by point 2 it bounces just as much, point 3 their base damage approximately catches up (I think ryze is still slightly behind but I forget) but dark winds now bounces 3 or 4 times more (i.e. does more dmg), and generally surpasses ryzes E in almost every way. Maxed dark winds bounces 11 times and silences! compared to ryzes 5 times ~120 base damage. Dark winds can also bounce farther and almost always bounces for the full duration, whereas ryzes often only hits once if the champ is running away.

Wow, big paragraph, in other words, fiddle's dark winds is superior in every way except 1v1 when dark winds has nothing else to bounce off (soooo rarely happens, like once a game) of or when paired with ryzes ult I guess, but then you could bring fiddle's ult into it too, and his really kicks ass.

I really want to like Ryze. Keep in mind, I've done better with Karthus, who's supposed to be the most difficult mage, after only trying him in 4 or 5 games. And I played the old ryze and carried teams with him. The current ryze sucks I'm fairly sure. I admit I could be wrong. But there is just so much slightly off about him. For an assassin character with such slow move speed and such small spell ranges it is rare I can ever catch someone off guard. His spells are fast but not fast enough to continuously cast (not sure where that rumor started) even with full CDR and maxed ranks and nor are they potent enough to one shot someone like annie and veigar can frequently do.

So he ends up in this weird space of not being an assassin, nor really being a good AOE character nor a good utility/CC character.

*remember, talking early game here

Vaultboy

Hey Zeraph, after our fail game yesterday, I almost got a pentakill with Tristana - took out 4 and dealt 90% of damage to the fifth - just didnt lasthit D:

My team were ragging on my ass the whole time about not killing their solo (Sivir) and letting her farm up 200 creeps in 25 mins - they neglected to see that I had 170 plus 3 kills - Sivir had none. So an Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, Mallet and Malady later, I was critting 500 and took out their whole team (with the assistance of my own, of course). One push and it was gg. Fun times - reminded me of Dota, but not in the ridiculous Fuzzy-farmed and carry sense.

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

Zeraph

Hah, nice. Now do it twice in a row! Just kidding, that's particularly impressive with tristana since she has no AOE burst ult.

Lasereth

Just won a 65 minute game as Tristana. Now THAT was stressful. At the end I had Infinity Edge, Black Cleaver, Bloodthirster, Phantom Dancer, and Banshee's Veil. I was killing the enemy in 4-5 hits literally. After a bunch of clusterfuck team fights we eventually won. We got Baron 4 times. They actually stole our Baron the first time and killed 4 of us...they should have won it then but they got greedy. Thankfully 2 of their people screwed up at the end and me and Udyr took them out in the Jungle and were able to coordinate a final push. Our Veigar was hitting for 1200 with his spells..it was crazy. Definitely the longest game I've ever had.

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

Zeraph

It's funny all these crazy tristana games, I mine as well share my crazy one too from yesterday.

My items by the end where, frozen mallet, madred's bloodrazor, bloodthirster, black cleaver, phantom dancer, and infinity edge. Yes that's right, I had so much money and kills I actually sold my boots and bought the bloodrazor outright. I was killing people in several seconds, somehow we still lost...crappy team. Score was 25-10-19.

Vaultboy

I think i finally saw the optimal Udyr build two days ago - maybe you were in that game, Zeraph? Our Udyr stacked 5 Zeals (one going to phantom dancer). His ms was 533, and he ate up heroes with bear stance going into tiger. Hilarious. In group fites he stunned everyone, switching around.

Just joking about the optimal build, btw. But it was still lulz.

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

Zeraph

lol, thought ms was capped at 500? or is it a soft cap? naw, wasn't in that game. He must have been zipping around.

Zeraph

Hey Joz, I'm thinking of unlocking Nidalee. Has she been nurfed or changed at all, or are there talks to?

Jozrael

Speed is softcapped: in joke games I've seen speeds of roughly 2500. It's kind of hilarious.

Nidalee hasn't been nerfed nor is there much call to nerf her. Right now the insider information is unlock Udyr if Riot doesn't get some sense knocked into them before they release this patch. He's going to be godly if all these buffs go through.

And say farewell to OP twitch :P

Zeraph

lol, that'd be funny. I'm tempted to create a practice game and see what I can get my speed to. I'm guessing 5 phantom dancers and...teemo's passive with boots of mob in there.

That's good about twitch I guess. I liked playing him but never had plans to unlock him because of his price. So good I suppose.

Udyr, huh. Hmmm.. I do like him, he's just not that fun. Has no fun tricks really, like shrooms, or teleport.

Lasereth

Hell even after his most recent buff Udyr is viable. Any moreso and he WILL be OP. Oh well OP champs make the game fun.

__________________
"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 a game an hour or two ago, Udry easily carried his team and easily led in kills. He jungled, which is the first I've seen. And would randomly spring out at people in bear and get random kills that way during the laning phase. It worked suprisingly well. The most shocking part was how unkillable this guy was with just boots, malady, and trinity force.

Jozrael

If you want to set landspeed records you need your whole team. I think Rammus is the favorite (other proposed ones are singed and yi and stuff but I don't think they can compete).

Measure who has the best speed buffs (nunu, janna, zilean, idk there's a bunch).

Zeraph

So what's the deal with the character contest? It's unofficial? What are the odds of actually getting your character created by riot? I'm working on one myself, would be awesome to see him in game.

Champion Suggestion Contest 3: Submission Phase - League of Legends Community
is the thread I mean

Jozrael

It's unofficial, and virtually nil. That doesn't mean you shouldn't post your suggestion: if you're lucky Zileas will post on it what he does and doesn't like on it, and if there's any potential with it.

ManWithAPlan

The game's opened up now...

anyone who does not have an account can get one here: https://signup.leagueoflegends.com?ref=4b4f3a8d67660

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In the end we are but wisps

Lasereth

Riot is giving away Corki to everyone. RAAAAAAAAGGGGGGEE. They better give an IP refund to those who own him already. Thanks for punishing those who supported you Riot. FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU face

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

YaWhateva

Does anyone have any suggestions for Heimer? I played him for the first time last night and he was super fun. I just went mostly pure defense (armor, m resist and hp).

__________________
“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!"

Lasereth

I've never played him but I know that ability power builds for him can be sick. His rockets hit hard as fuck.

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

Jozrael

Glad to see you back with us Whateva .

@Manwithaplan: this is very true. Is there any chance we can have this thread renamed something more suitable, since it's pretty much the general LoL thread now?

@Lasereth: I'm not sure how I feel on it. I feel biased since I didn't purchase it, but I voted yes. I can understand where you're coming from, though. I don't view it as a punishment, but I can see how you'd feel disenfranchised.

As for Heimer, a general caster mix is good. I go AP, MPen, and CD Red.

ManWithAPlan

I could make a new thread, complete with review and sign-up link....

__________________
In the end we are but wisps

Zeraph

Naw, there's not enough of us and this thread already has tons of info. I PMd Reese to edit his original post so new people can see that the game is out now and free to play.

@ hemier builds- his rockets hit hard but are really still only good for early to mid game. And mostly for harassing. So I'm not sure I'd do an AP build around him. He also runs out of mana extremely fast anyways if you do that. Early game I'd go mana regen. 1st point still go towards turrets. Second to rockets. After that it'd depend on if you're going up against people that can heal or not. If they can't heal, then up those rockets to 3 or 4 and just harass the heck out of em. If they can heal turrets are still his main build. But experiment, he's a goofy champ.

So what does everyone think of Poppy? So far I'm kind of surprised, she doesn't seem to be the beast the forum QQers are complaining she is. Mostly she just steals KBs/mops up. Udyr on the other hand is sick right now. I ended one game with 5 buildings destroyed. You can play him so many ways as the game calls for, its awesome. He can play mid, jungle, gank, push, etc. He's a bit weak 1-5 but he just keeps ramping up after that once you can stance dance fully. He can take almost any champ 1v1 and does decently in team fights too.

---------- Post added at 09:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 PM ----------

If they do give him away what do I need to do to get him? Is it automatic? They said you have to have an account made by midnight tonight. Do they mean an ign account (from voting?) Or are they just referring to your LoL account?

YaWhateva

ManWithAPlan just wants to get his referrals. for shame!

And yeah, I'm back, haven't played much but I'm getting there. I've been trying new heroes a lot. I've been trying fiddlestix and I see people own with him but I can't do shit haha. I get murdered so quick.

__________________
“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!"

Vaultboy

Corki for free? That'd be awesome. He was on my to-buy list, but not at 6300 ip.

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

ManWithAPlan

If you can show me the shame in it, then I'll admit you're right and feel.... shamed? In the meantime I affirm that I am simply sharing something, and, through no cost to yourself am getting a non-monetary reward. It was pointless to share before because I only had a few invites to give out to some friends. But now it's open.

And if we made a new thread, I could post all of this info and screenshots I have typed up about the game, and hopefully people would hop on board and then there WOULD be enough of us :P



btw- Udyr is the best farmer... phoenix stance lvl 5 = almost instant kill on a wave of creep with no mana cost
2nd best is corky, get a little bit of damage and cast your machine gun
3rd best is cho'gath with xp build - needs his stun and silence but that clears out a whole wave
4th best is annie - 4th because you really need a lot of ap to get her to kill a whole wave, and sometimes you miss some.

__________________
In the end we are but wisps

Jozrael

There are a lot of good farmers, but Udyr is certainly up there. I think he's a tick OP right now (turtle is lawlzy).

Lasereth

Cho'Gath with 22 MP5 at level 1 with runes is hilarious. I buy a Meki Pendant and use my full page of tier 3 runes and I can spam Rupture and Scream almost nonstop. Now THAT'S harassment.

Poppy is fun. I played as her a few times. First normal match I played I dominated. Right now her Q is actually bugged and is hitting way harder than it should so it will be "nerfed." Her ult is really cool in team fights but it's not as great at tower diving as I thought it would be since if your target dies, the ult stops. The funny part about Poppy is that you can build her pure DPS attack damage/speed/crit etc. and still be a tank. Her passive WILL be nerfed. When she's at 1/5th HP and you Feast her and she doesn't die...that's BS for a passive. As a matter of fact, if you build her as a tank, it lowers the efficiency of her passive, so pure DPS is actually better. She has the DPS of a carry and the survivability of a tank. She won't last in the shape she is right now. I think she'll be fine once they nerf Q though.

Fiddlesticks tips: spam Dark Wind in enemy champs as often as you can. Use your ult wisely: don't initiate team fights with it...use it to turn around a fight that's already in progress. Don't use it on fleeing champs either. Make sure to catch them in a terrible situation with it and you'll get triple and quadrakills if you do it right. Use your Terror fear spell on them when you ult so they can't get out of it.

---------- Post added at 01:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:52 PM ----------

I'm playing Alistar a lot recently. With my mana regen runes I can spam his heal spell without stopping, literally. Everytime it's ready I can use it. I can even throw in Pulverize and Headbutts and still not run out of mana. I dominate laning with him. Take Flash, flash in and pulverize, then walk behind them and headbutt towards your turret and it's GG. He's a freaking great tank. I won 10 matches in a row as him!!!

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

Zeraph

Meh. Poppy's passive only makes her a tank vs a few select abilities that do a ton of damage in one go. Almost all of them ults. Like cho, nunu, veigar, etc. There's actually really only a handful that make the passive truly nice. She so does not have the survivability of a tank. If she gets focused, which she often does as any dps does, she goes down .5 seconds slower than normal (talking strictly passive, not with ult). Whereas a decked out tank might not go down at all. Saying she has the survivability of a tank is flat out wrong.

Say she has 2k hps and gets hit for 200 damage, 10%, her passive does nothing. 250 damage, her passive takes off 25 damage. 300 damage, her passive takes off 50 damage. After that it finally starts to get noticeable, but really, how often do you get hit for insane amounts of damage? Most things come in waves like kats ult that does many ticks of smaller damage which her passive wouldn't reduce at all or you take a lot of damage because you're taking it from multiple people which it wouldn't reduce either unless a single source is above 10%.

Allistar is sick. He is one of the most useful champs to have on a team. Most just don't seem to know it as he doesn't get many KBs. But he is one of the best tanks/support/pushers.

Sivir is also an insane farmer when she gets her richochet skill up. There are a ton.

Fiddle: Another strat you can try is get (dark winds is awesomesauce tho) Drain up priority and fear 2nd. Those 2 right there net me 1-3 kills almost every game lvls 1-5. Because so many fiddles focus on dark winds first they never expect a fully skilled Drain on them so they often stay in range far longer than they should. Even with them beating on you you can still take them with nothing but drain (1v1). This can vary a bit of course depending on levels and equipment, but if you have maxed drain, and then maxed fear, and competitive AP/HP for your level you should be fine. Just be careful if they're at full hps as drain won't one shot someone the vast majority of the time but it will take about 2/3rds of their hps if they stick around and heal you for the same.

Edit: ManWithAPlan- and why can't you post it in this thread? We PM'd a mod to change the title. People have done similar things for WoW, and there's more people on tfp that play that, and the threads fall off. We really have no need of an extra thread for LoL.

ManWithAPlan

I think you're misreading what her passive does. Poppy's passive reduces damage dealt by 50% if it's >10% her max life.


life: 3500
damage: 300 -> 300
damage 350 -> 125

That's huge. and if you're building her as DPS, that's your problem. Sure, any hero built for dps is gonna do DPS, but you're not using her full potential

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In the end we are but wisps

Zeraph

Actually, its hard to say either way. I browsed the forums, and reread her passive. Neither of which was conclusive. So far though, playing her feels like my theory is correct.

Also las, feast will never kill her or kassidin as it is now because of how it works, not because it reduces damage. For whatever reason they made it so that it calculates how much damage needs to be done and does it exactly or whatever, so if you have defensive mastery, kassidins passive or poppy's you can't feast said player. I found that while browsing the forum for poppy's ult. I think that's a bug though that they'll fix eventually, not sure though.

Joz do you know how poppy's ult actually works?

ManWithAPlan

Wait a sec.... I just pulled up her info from the game database.

"Valiant Fighter - Any damage dealt to Poppy that exceeds 10% of her current health is reduced by 50%. This does not reduce damage from structures"

Did it always say that, or did they patch it in the last couple of days?

But in any case, it seems pretty clear to me, if she's at full health, with 1000 health, any damage over 100, will be reduced by half. So a damage of 1000 (one hit kill) will get reduced to 500.

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In the end we are but wisps

Jozrael

Is her Q bugged? I thought they fixed that on the Test Realm.

Her ult is still fantastic for tower diving, but yes it's not a get away free card. I'm not sure if her passive will be nerfed: that's somewhat the point of it xD. I personally don't feel it should affect certain spells (notably Cho's ult), but that's because I'm biased from DotA, where Axe's ult worked that (no matter what, if they were below the 'feast HP', they died. The sole exception to this was if Puck phase shifted the instant before Axe cast it.

Alistar is AMAZING. However: he should not be played as a tank. It'll win you games at low Elos, but at high Elos he's much better as support. The core item on him is sheen right now. He does not need mana regen early game (he shouldn't really be spamming his heal spell at that time). You are exactly right that his flash/pulverize/headbutt combo is his signature move, and it is DEADLY. The main reason Alistar is so deadly is that the knockup and headbutt at uncleanseable.


@Zeraph: While I don't think it's in need of nerfing, Poppy's passive for sure isn't useless. http://idunnolol.com/lol/poppycalc.html is a handy tool that'll show you against -normal carry dps- how many extra hits it takes to kill her. But you're right that she doesn't have the survivability of the tank; its just measured in a few extra hits to kill her (which mostly matters in 1v1 situations).

@ManWithaPlan: IRC consensus is that Zeraph's interpretation of the passive is correct.

@Zeraph again: Ult, or passive? The passive works the way you described it, the Ult is entirely different.

@MWaP: A 1000 damage attack will have the 900 portion reduced by 450, so she'll take 550 damage. As for the current health, as far as I know that's not how it works.



Man I'm having so much fun WRECKING with free Udyr this week. Lawl. Riot is facepalming, they might hotfix him soon. Protip for easy wins: solo mid Udyr, max turtle stance first. Don't be aggressive til at least level 3.

ManWithAPlan

You can't put 3 levels in turtle right away.

While I understand what you're trying to say about Poppy's passive, I don't see how one can interpret what you're saying from the flavor text of the ability. If that is indeed how it works, then they need to fix the text, because the text says something completely different. In any case this is a question better addressed on the official forums

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Zeraph

He said level 3, not level 3 turtle skill. Joz is actually quasi official. I forget what it is, council I think? Its only 1 step down from official. They get their own secret forums, damn you Joz! He's likely the most official response you'll get, unless you get super lucky in the LoL forums (like a 1 in 100 chance probably), which is why I like asking questions in this thread so much.

Manwith- Obviously that's not the case since that's exactly how I interpreted the passive on my first reading. I do agree that it can be a bit ambiguous, but not to the degree you imply. (and so can half the skills in the game, its just the nature of fitting in complex skills into one or two sentences)

Also, it is CURRENT health. Can you believe that crap? And ya its always been that way. Her passive really kicks in at low health since every hit is reduced by then. I wonder if they'll keep it that way... I mean still, its mostly only useful for 1v1 as it still doesn't give you tank survivability when getting focused fired, but damn. There's enough 1v1 or team fights where 1v1s occur off to the side briefly for it to matter. I've already died several times because I thought I could finish her with a nuke, then she charges and Q.

EDIT: I don't get how they can give such useful passives to some champs, but only give ~3% aura crit to TF.

Zeraph

BTW is twitch still getting nurfed any further Joz? Or was the ~ minus 40% speed and increased CD on his ult all that he's getting? I actually have a surplus of IP for once and am debating on buying him. Udyr *is* sick, but I find him boring, kind of like nasus, for some reason.