Any karthus players in here? Is he still viable at mid-high elo (1800+) ? I know they nerfed his damage. Im just looking to buy another strong AP champ that isn't brand/orianna (boring).

Its between Leblanc, Karth and Cassio atm.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

July 18 2011 15:43 GMT

#21642

On July 18 2011 16:24 LoCicero wrote:
I've thought about joining a competitive team to get back into things, but I just don't know if I want to invest the time in this game. I have some strategies in mind and it would be fun to try them out in a tournament setting. Oh well, it's fun being relatively obscure to the majority of the LoL community.

after I finish becoming independently e-famous and want to come back to competitive LoL, let's talk.

HyperionDreamer

Canada1528 Posts

July 18 2011 15:43 GMT

#21643

On July 19 2011 00:39 Southlight wrote:
There's no need to adhere to the EU meta anyways. The bigger issue (which someone alluded to from the US side) is that the top US players weren't comfortable with the heroes that can fuck up the EU meta.

Which heroes would those be? The only thing that I've seen fuck up the EU meta at the moment is someone playing EU meta better.

Fishcakes

United States149 Posts

July 18 2011 15:48 GMT

#21644

Double AP always makes me want to run a strong ad laner mid (corki) and veigar/soraka bot.

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 15:49 GMT

#21645

Bot lane support + AD has some nasty counterpick duos (Taric + Annie most famous, but there're plenty of other sustained range-cc burst combos, esp. with Leona), and AP solos have a lot of funky bad matchups (ie. Kassadin, sustain solos, etc). Also AD vs AP has always been a perfectly viable matchup for the AD hero, so you can essentially lock down their bot lane and have a good mid/top, plus minus jungle advantage.

Senx

Sweden5901 Posts

July 18 2011 15:53 GMT

#21646

I think that these teams play so few champs and they have their specific roles/lanes locked in so going out of their comfort zone in tournament games just isn't going to happen. Not enough practice to really try new setups.

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 16:10 GMT

#21647

Someone who was interviewed from US team (IIRC TSM?) mentioned that being their issue; not being familiar with a wide enough range of heroes.

rwrzr

United States1980 Posts

July 18 2011 16:13 GMT

#21648

The cost of reactionary play is that you are forced to be a jack of all trades to compensate for every possible lane comp. If we are talking about the duo lane specifically it usually requires both players to counter pick.

Wining lane worth the cost of unfamiliarity?

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 16:21 GMT

#21649

Considering that the strength of the bot lane is a serious lynchpin to the EU style's play, and is a direct contrast to what used to be the preferred US style, yes.

rwrzr

United States1980 Posts

July 18 2011 16:31 GMT

#21650

EU Style counters US Style?

I'd say a Tri-lane would be interesting, but jungle is a necessity in this game rather than just another option ala DotA/HoN.

I guess US needs to buckleup and learn some new champs because the bushes on bottom aren't being removed anytime soon.

gtrsrs

United States9109 Posts

July 18 2011 16:31 GMT

#21651

so the internet at the place i just moved into is far better than at my old house
i think i might be able to stream somewhat comfortably
also i'm still a bit drunk from last night's escapades
so i'm gonna stream some slightly-drunk duo queue ~15-1600 gogo

www.livestream.com/gtrsrs

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 16:35 GMT

#21652

The US style used to be tank top some type of carry mid and then some random shit at bottom that usually sit there in lane like an immobile rock and destroys the opponent's bottom, or exerts map control via roaming power to control jungle + bottom river + dragon.

The ability to deflect aggression using support + ad trumped that by creating a "threat" at bot - the freefarming AD carry - that needed to be dealt with. During DH US teams 1) couldn't come up with a method of dealing with it (think Savior vs Bisu) and 2) weren't comfortable with the duo lanes that could anyways and so they 3) tried to counter it by mimicking, which resulted in uncomfortable heroes anyways (lack of dedicated support players got exposed).

Edit:
For some more snowball effect, the inability to really deal with the bottom lane playstyle for US then felt like it resulted in some haywire mid/solo top picks, which got further muddled when EU players switched around heroes like they were pulling out random stuff from a bag of candy. US players whom were comfortable with certain heroes/matchups were left more-or-less hanging as the team would scramble to put "someone" as support bot and "someone" as carry... at bot (not solo), resulting in the need for two carries that can deal with strong AP heroes against players whom made their living soloing strong APs, and when US players tried to counterpick an AP hero the EU player would simply switch to another one. Constant mismatches. And you could tell most of the US teams seemed "behind" on picks, as they'd routinely pick bottom lane combos that don't make much sense, or solo picks that weren't very good matchups. Not surprisingly the US teams in general seemed like they had better success simply playing "their hero", but then would get stompled by a free-farm bot lane that they couldn't deal with.

UniversalSnip

9871 Posts

July 18 2011 17:00 GMT

#21653

you make it sound like US got stomped at DH

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 17:07 GMT

#21654

They didn't, but they definitely looked out of whack, which a lot of people would agree with. And the whole tournament it felt like them trying to deal with the Eu style, as opposed to exerting their own style.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

July 18 2011 17:09 GMT

#21655

except day 1 when they got 2 first and 1 second seed. W8 A MINUTE...

rwrzr

United States1980 Posts

July 18 2011 17:20 GMT

#21656

A really funny counter in pubs to the strong botlane duos is the 'bot-lane party' where you have constant 4-man ganks + pushes.

I was looking at the DH brackets on the LoL official website. If you are looking purely at matches won then you could say that US got stomped. Obviously if you look at places in a 6 man tourney doesn't look like anyone got stomped.

Southlight

United States11767 Posts

July 18 2011 17:28 GMT

#21657

Not saying they got stomped, I'm saying they looked out of whack trying to deal with the Eu style, as opposed to "playing their style" ~_~

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

July 18 2011 17:29 GMT

#21658

and I'm just saying that I still can't figure out why they were scrambling to switch in bracket when they were so successful in pools.

DrKlingmann

Poland356 Posts

July 18 2011 17:30 GMT

#21659

On July 18 2011 22:51 mercurial wrote:
Are you going west or east Jarpen? It'd be no good if we lost a jungler of your calibur to the russians ._.

I intend to stay north-east. At least for some time. I don't want to blow my free server-swap before everything stabilizes.
Well.. if there would be sth serious going on on west that could use me then I might reconsider.
But for now I have very sparse timeframes to play LoL. I'd love to play 5s to create some fnatic smashing team of nonames. But I'd have to be much more flexible with my schedule.
Let me smash some russians :D and my nemesis 'Alex Ich' who was raping me every time I played vs him when he was jungling Ez.

Well.. at least that free server-swap will be available. And then I'll make some smurf to troll west server n00bZ.

rob.au

1087 Posts

July 18 2011 17:33 GMT

#21660

If you pick an aggressive bot lane you're basically saying that you have to dominate that lane to make up for the disadvantage you'll have in mid-lategame. All ranged dps + support has to do is not die, and stay relatively close on farm and they come out ahead.

AP carry/Tank + Support = ap carry is lower level, where levels generally matter more on an AP than AD.

Other double stun lanes where you go halves on farm again puts you worse off mid-game assuming the enemy doesn't die.

Looking at the euro teams they tend to pick junglers like jarvan/ali/nunu that can gank from about 2:20 onwards on practically no cd. These junglers can essentially babysit a lane if you know that the enemy lane HAS to succeed to be effective later on.

In addition to this, in general AD solo's don't have many favourable matchups. I can't see ali/anivia/brand/gragas/orianna etc being too threatened by them. You also have a lot stronger ganks both when the jungler goes mid and if your mid happens to go bot/top if they can basically burst them dead from 70% hp and throw a stun in there too.