League of legends numbers revealed ! - Page 18

On July 28 2011 05:12 Microchaton wrote:


There are many reasons and most have already been mentionned.
Let's take it "chronogically" from the start of the game. INB4 HUGE WALLS OF TEXT

- Most of the time, the junglers will start their jungling route with the Blue golem, so they have enough mana/cdr to clear the jungle swiftly and hopefully having enough health left for an early gank. Teams usually scatter around to scout, or sit with 5 man on a bush hoping someone will facecheck like a boss (this really doesnt happen in decent level games). Because of Clairvoyance (a summoner spell 99,9% of the time taken by the support aka wardbot (crystal maiden pretty much), there are usually mindgames involved if the teams are agressive enough. It's pretty common for teams to invade (depending on their team comps and the summoner spells taken, teams with heavy lvl 1 CC and 1/2 exhausts/ignite will usually do so against team with a less brutal lvl 1).
Oftentimes, the weaker team will back off if they see the stronger enemy team coming at them. Another very used (especially at higher level) tactic is that the stronger team will not bother trying to go for first blood, but just take the whole "lizard" part of their enemy jungle, or at least their Wraiths (big loss of xp/gold weakening the enemy's jungler by a LOT), giving them an edge on xp/gold without losing really anything. It's especially strong if you're on the purple side because you can give "red buff" (dot+slow on hit) to your ranged AD carry and he doesnt waste time running to bottom lane afterwards (bottom lane is 95% of the time Ranged AD carry and hard support). Another common strat is to ward the bush next to the enemy lizard, and your team will then try to sneak just before he kills it and hopefully steal it or even kill the jungler, oftentimes giving double buff to your mid player, giving him a HUGE advantage. There are also other possibilities but I'm not going to list everything.

AFAIK : sometimes people will try to group up and go for a lvl 1 first blood in DotA, but it's nowhere near systematic, and has way less subtlety (group up, go somewhere, if an enemy tumbles on them, bang first blood.

Laning phase wise. Teleport ganks, usually done by the top lane or sometimes by the mid lane, generally by someone with a big burst/cc. Your team puts a ward somewhere in the bottom bush or the tribush and here comes a gank. This kind of happens on DotA and is pretty much what is the most fun in the game, when everybody tps one after the other on a turret to join a fight. But you can't "hide it" like you can in LoL, it's much more straightforward (and the particles are huge). Those tp ganks are usually coordinated with a jungler gank, making it 4v2 and generally resulting in a kill if the enemy is not careful. Also, some champions have "globals" ultimate, kind of like Zeus in DotA, that are used to add some damage and/or cc to help a gank or a countergank (Ashe/Ezreal/gangplank/karthus) or even teleports (Shen/Twisted Fate/Nocturne) the person near the allies/ennemies. The downside of that is that the empty lanes will generally be pushed in return, damaging towers heavily, giving the enemy uncontested farm and lowering the gankers own farm. A failed TP gank is DISASTROUS. for the top lane. Even killing someone is sometimes not worth it.

During the laning phase in general, every lane has to be aware of your own and your ennemies' buffs respawns to try snatching them. It's pretty similar to runes, except you only have to pick up runes and that's it, you have to kill strong, powerful mobs for the buffs, and you most of the time take quite a bit of damage doing it; also, the buffs are in the jungles, not sitting in the river, which makes it safer to get your owns (but those buffs are often warded by enemies !) and VERY dangerous to try to steal your ennemies, unless you just killed one/several people. Those buffs also make for more choices when you get an advantage by killing someone. Killing the enemy mid lane and/or the jungler can make it very tempting to try to snatch enemy buffs, instead of just pushing. Another thing, is that this is FOUR buffs, with nothing random about them we're talking about, instead of a random rune whose effect can completely change the outcome of trying to pick them up and pop at one of 2 random places.

One of the most important thing in LoL is the drake(or dragon) control. located at a pretty much sat a place symetric to Nashor (Roshan, we'll talk about it later). It's is a very, very strong mob, immune to ccs, who does tons of damage early game (and scales up, as every mob/creep in the game, with time), spawns at 5:00, gives a good amount of experience and most of all 190 global gold ( = per player). It respawns every 6 minutes. Getting dragons early game is obviously very important, and the practicalities are similar to those mentionned above. teleport to a ward from top lane for instance make it an at most 5v4 to contest the dragon, and the weaker team will usually not try to fight them up front, at most try to steal it (ideally with smite, sometimes with global or long range ultimates, it happens a LOT (ashe/lux/ezreal ults...).
It also comes in the category of reasons of why "deaths in LoL ARE actually punishing". Because if you just ganked the bottom lane and ideally they died, you have a pretty much guaranteed "free dragon" which MORE THAN COMPENSATES the loss of gold that would have had to suffer a dead opponent in DotA. In this category you obviously find the "buffs you get from dead opponents" too...
Losing a dragon and not knowing his death timer is also crippling, as the other team will be able to gather just as it spawns and zerg it without you having the time to realize it, and while losing 1 dragon isnt too big of a deal, losing 3+ is HUGE, and can make up for losing the lanes, but requires very good timings and communication (and warding ! )

Then come Nashor himself, spawning at 15:00. Though he is obviously LoL's Roshan, the mechanics and strategies around him are actually very different. In DotA most of the time, you "dare" kill Roshan when your team already has a big advantage and your creeps are pushing hard, so you can get away with doing it without much risk. "Sneaking" Roshans (or Kongors in HoN) generally ends up either in an unsuccessful retreat after your opponents show up, or in disaster as they rape you doing it. Both of those happen very often (much, much more often than in DotA actually, where you most of games end with neither team having really tried to kill it) in LoL. Several reasons : It gives a lot of experience and 300 global gold, and a 5:00 buff giving lots of stats and big regeneration boosts, that can completely turn a game around (no item though). As a matter of fact, a very big part of the late game in LoL works around baron. It needs to be warded at all times and you need to be very careful not to show up at the other side of the map when the opponents are likely to zerg it. The buff can literally turn a game around, especially if your opponents steal it while you were doing it (the famous aoe stuns/silents hitting the jungler who then can't smite, or the 'ultimates' steal). Some champions, if they have a good farm, can even solo him (those with huge lifesteal and strong DPS, obviously) but it's really dangerous. Warding and counterwarding is insanely important there, having oracles or spare wards can completely change the course of the game. Whatever happens, the team with the buff, if they didnt get completely destroyed early/mid game and group up together for a push, is much more dangerous than without. They also gain a big health and mana regeneration, favorising slow, / poky pushes. The team without the buff will usually try to "stall" the game for 5 minutes, either by preventing them to push too hard, often sacrificing a tower or even an inhibitor (= a rax, except it respawns after a while). Some will try to backdoor or split push if they have the right champions, forcing the enemy team to split if they're not confident they can end the game, or losing side lanes towers, or even inhibitors. These split pushes / backdoor also happen a lot at bottom lane to bait a team into ganking the split pusher, and losing a Baron (works especially well with globals obviously). Tons of mind games and running around is involved in these situations, in my opinion with much more subtlety and differences than in DotA when the only change is that someone will have an Ankh. Also,losing racks is so much more crucial in DotA that you can't really "give them up" anyway, it makes the game tons more difficult to win, when it's only a "problem" in LoL. A big one, but nothing huge. LoL gives more decision making in that: Should we kill this guy and stop the split push ? Force a fight right now at our tower ? At Baron ? the fact that LoL depends less on a single "hard carry" and more on the team as a whole late game also makes for very different possibilities late game, there is much more decision making about who to engage first and who to focus, and as the fights late game are very rarely as "instagibbing" as in DotA, it's not only (though it DOES happen) a : you initiate now and there and throw everything hoping it will kill the enemy carry and others. Decisions change and evolve more in teamfights, and can turn around much more easily than DotA's, a big reason being more "spammy" as you like to say, skills, especially with Cooldown Reduction. Most non-hard-carries in DotA do nothing for 13-15 seconds after using their abilities/combo, they either retreat or autoattack stuff. Obviously, factoring in the summoner spells add even more to the equation.
Also, completely losing a teamfight in DotA mid/late game is DEVASTATING because you will usually lose several towers and/or racks because of that, putting you in an extremly difficult position. It's not quite as bad in LoL because of
1 :no gold loss
2inhibitors respawning >several champions actually do stuff in the team late game, not only one, so you don't have to keep your only carry in base pushing off supercreeps.
3 Baron. This is kind of double-edged here. But when you win a teamfight and are able to push freely to the racks in DotA, you do it. You don't go to Roshan. In LoL, it is actually often more beneficial to get the baron and then pushing, even if it results in your team actually not pushing at all. However, if the "winning team" ends up very low health, as they don't have "tps" as in DotA, if they push until the enemy respawns, they will then have to go back to base via the 8 seconds "recall".
And in the meanwhile, the respawning team might very well rush to baron and do it, especially late game when your team has a huge dps. And this team will usually be in the better position, even having lost a teamfight and having its lanes pushed. More decision making.
In early game, you can pretty much make the same argument and replace Baron with Dragon. AND stealing enemy buffs is also very, very important late game, especially if some champions are much more powerful with them (AP carries with blues, AD carries with reds). A team with 2 blues and 2 reds probably has a better chance of winning a teamfight that a team with baron buff. I genuinely think it is more interesting than your carry snatching the rune hoping it will be a double damage.
The fact that a lot of champions actually "do stuff" and are not cattered to "niche" roles (the hard carry autoattacks stuff, the support ward everywhere but is pretty much absent from teamfight, the other make their combos then back the fuck off or autoattack stuff) and that the targeting priorities and evolving decision making can change a lot, and in a split second make the team as a whole much more important that simply trying to protect your hard carry by CCing stuff hoping he doesnt get gibbed (most will have their BKB anyway, yay you can't do anything but autoattacking me to try to kill me, derp, doesnt exist in LoL).
It's really not explainable if you haven't played it yourself, but a support can actually win the teamfight by itself in LoL, given a good opportunity and seizing it (great janna ultimate perfectly splitting the enemy team, great alistar engage, soraka silencing an extremly dangerous enemy (not necessary a carry) or taric stunning him... Blink daggers of DotA also make for some pretty ridiculous engages ( Enigma / earthshaker ). Sure, there are LOTS of strong engages in LoL, but they won't win a teamfight against a good team as people can actually build items to counter the bursts/ccs. In DotA most people can't really afford to diverge from their core build for "luxuries" and even then it's usually not enough. While even the strongest engages/combos in LoL can be countered relatively easily (annie/amumu...). I've seen several DotA games where the AD carry ended up playin quite literally alone, with sometimes ankh and buying back several times.

Meh, so I just wrote that in one shot, it's probably pretty horrible to read and I certainly missed a lot of stuff, but I need to leave soon and I'll probably edit it later.
I'm always opened to criticism and discussion as long as it's not "RETARDED KIDDO LOL". I know I can seem coarse writing some of that stuff, but I'm not really trying to be agressive, usually the idiocy of some of the haters take its toll to my gentleness though. Cheers !

PS : Oh, and stop making me say what I didnt say, some people above are implying I said "HoN is sinking lol everybody's leaving" or "DotA has no teamwork". I never said that at all. Making stuff up just to add to your arguments doesn't work.