On May 31 2011 07:32 Seiuchi wrote: Don't worry, Morello's gonna use the qualifiers + Dreamhack as an opportunity to castrate Vlad like he's always wanted to do. Too busy Gangplanking him to worry about Swain.
TBH, this is one part of Riot's nerf attitude I dislike--they nerf too fast sometimes when something looks strong. They don't give people enough time to learn how to play against something, and when people DO figure it out, it coincides with some of the nerfs, so the champion ends up underpowered. This has happened with several champions, as well as some item changes (like the IE/LW changes--people were already transitioning onto strong beefy guys in lane to play against ranged carries, so the nerfs just went over the top).
You don't get enough people who go "oh hmm, that was strong--we should play around with it and refine playing with/against it" because Riot nips it at the bud at the next patch release.
Well, in Vlad's case you can argue they haven't nerfed too fast. It's really just that Vlad's design is somewhat screwy in the fact that nerfing things that aren't Q doesn't significantly change him, and nerfing Q significantly will just completely break him as a character. They've said several times that the reason they haven't nerfed him that hard is that Morello has a significant vendetta against his design, and I imagine a sidenote to that is that when they do finally put the hammer on Q they're going to have to completely remake him, and not one of those quickie ones like Morde's.
On May 31 2011 07:32 Seiuchi wrote: Don't worry, Morello's gonna use the qualifiers + Dreamhack as an opportunity to castrate Vlad like he's always wanted to do. Too busy Gangplanking him to worry about Swain.
TBH, this is one part of Riot's nerf attitude I dislike--they nerf too fast sometimes when something looks strong. They don't give people enough time to learn how to play against something, and when people DO figure it out, it coincides with some of the nerfs, so the champion ends up underpowered. This has happened with several champions, as well as some item changes (like the IE/LW changes--people were already transitioning onto strong beefy guys in lane to play against ranged carries, so the nerfs just went over the top).
You don't get enough people who go "oh hmm, that was strong--we should play around with it and refine playing with/against it" because Riot nips it at the bud at the next patch release.
Honestly, 1-1.5 sec increase to Q cooldown at lvl 5 would do a lot. Maybe they could then buff E and W damage and Vlad might become significantly more interesting.
On May 31 2011 08:15 APurpleCow wrote: In the season one qualifiers, whenever chogath was picked, they just went pure tank on him with no AP.
What happened to AP chogath? Tank cho seemed to be almost never used before I took a 5 month break.
Tank Cho is really good at tanking hehe I don't think I've ever seen a full tank Cho though.. People try to buy as much AP on him as the situation allows in the particular match. At least a RoA is bought usually.
Yet AP is Cho is not bad, all 4 skills of his have quite good AP ratios, all 4 of his skills do damage, 3 of them are AoE. Though the skills are short ranged(Rupture is not though of course) and if he is squishy he can melt easily.
On May 31 2011 07:32 Seiuchi wrote: Don't worry, Morello's gonna use the qualifiers + Dreamhack as an opportunity to castrate Vlad like he's always wanted to do. Too busy Gangplanking him to worry about Swain.
TBH, this is one part of Riot's nerf attitude I dislike--they nerf too fast sometimes when something looks strong. They don't give people enough time to learn how to play against something, and when people DO figure it out, it coincides with some of the nerfs, so the champion ends up underpowered. This has happened with several champions, as well as some item changes (like the IE/LW changes--people were already transitioning onto strong beefy guys in lane to play against ranged carries, so the nerfs just went over the top).
You don't get enough people who go "oh hmm, that was strong--we should play around with it and refine playing with/against it" because Riot nips it at the bud at the next patch release.
Well, in Vlad's case you can argue they haven't nerfed too fast. It's really just that Vlad's design is somewhat screwy in the fact that nerfing things that aren't Q doesn't significantly change him, and nerfing Q significantly will just completely break him as a character. They've said several times that the reason they haven't nerfed him that hard is that Morello has a significant vendetta against his design, and I imagine a sidenote to that is that when they do finally put the hammer on Q they're going to have to completely remake him, and not one of those quickie ones like Morde's.
A little backstory on design theory first...
Every champion that relies heavily on spells for damage output requires some mechanism and balance that essentially "gates" their damage output. In most cases, this is mana and cooldown. The interaction between the damage from spells, their resource cost to cast and cooldown determine whether a caster is burst or dps. The main component is "uptime", or the ability to keep doing damage. Burst casters generally have smaller uptime, but frontload all their damage. DPS casters have more uptime in order to keep the sustained damage.
This balance is also what determines whether a caster is early or late game orientated. For example, the energy system is an early game orientated mechanism. All Energy Champions have a way to regain energy from using their abilities, and they can use their abilities more than other champions early-game in lane. This makes Kennen scarier in the first 5 min than, say, Anivia. However, because Energy Regen is flat and cannot be itemised, Kennen's "uptime" falls off later on in the game. This also means CDR is less useful on him because even if all his spells are off CD, he won't necessarily have the energy pool to cast them constantly. On the otherhand, Anivia can itemise mana and mana-regen which means late game she can theoretically have virtually 100% damage uptime with enough CDR.
For manaless and energyless champions, this balance becomes very hard to balance. For example, Renekton has no disadvantage to using his Fury resource. Whatever he does, it's a positive outcome for him. Tactically speaking, a player not managing his fury doesn't lose out too much. It's just a matter of how much more positive benefits s/he gets.
For Vladimir, his "gate" is his health. His spell usage mechanic is supposed to be like a sink. You pour hp in with Regen and Q, you lose it from using your other spells. This in-out mechanism is supposed to prevent him from just mindlessly spamming skills and having that 100% do-lots-of-damage-uptime with enough CDR. The problem though is that thanks to things like Spellvamp (and to a lesser extent, hp regen) this sink relationship doesn't work properly. When you heal for almost as much as it costs to cast a spell, then there's no thinking involved and you just hit buttons for free damage.
Increasing costs of casting his spells just hurts him even more earlygame before he itemises. Changing spellvamp has repercussions for other champions that rely on it. Reducing his damage too much risks making him subpar compared to other AP Carries even if he can cast spells 24/7.
TL;DR Vlad's entire resource mechanic and the damage attached to it is fundamentally what makes him either very powerful or not powerful at all which makes him so troublesome to balance.
I guess the only other thing is that I've heard that before about how Vlad was designed to heal with Q and then take damage to do damage with his other abilities. The way you gain abilities is part of his fundamental problem; if they say, decreased the damage on transfusion and just kept the healing (say it was a 1:1 healing ratio, but it did 70 damage at level 5) and then made it so your damage was based off Tides of Blood, he's also going to be useless because you can only max one skill at a time. Either you max Tides and then you do damage but can't survive lane because you're constantly true damaging yourself, or you max Q and the enemy freefarms.
On May 31 2011 05:25 Shikyo wrote: 200 gold + 1100 + 500 so the proc and movespeed cost 410 or so... I'd say it's pretty good value for money as you'll soon get NLR etc. which makes the proc significantly better
On May 31 2011 04:46 Iplaythings wrote:
On May 31 2011 02:15 Shikyo wrote:
On May 31 2011 01:25 Iplaythings wrote: Hey ! triforce is good on gangplank man.
It's based around 1. movespeed and 2. decent damage for Q while it being the only dmg item you get, along with Shurelyas, E, and FoN you're super fast.
You actually have ~4s cd 300 dmg Qs on champions after you get a sheen and can somewhat outharrass plenty of them.
Also randomkorean do you do anything but troll?
0123456789 I used to spam screenshots but people said that's annoying, are you serious? Of course I can start spamming them again if you want me to.
I wasnt ironic. Edit: ah w/e screenies doesnt work. Look at my match history if you want proof that I use it anyways.. if these screenies matter at all in this case let me say something else: Triforce is fucking baws on GP, for the love of god get it.
I know, I was supporting what you said kinda... I was arguing against the randomtrollrean post
@above: Cos Gangplank moves quicker and isn't purely melee and is a lane dominator unlike Nasus who just tries to stay alive in lane whereas gangplank can farm faster than anyone. Also completely disagree about triforce being better for Nasus at least for the reasons you gave.
But umm thanks, I'm gonna try that o.O Though I prefer only 4 gold per items so I get sheen
always out dps poppy and vlad every time no boots required
Man why couldnt u carry me this hard when I was feeding on gingerbrown.. I've been avoiding the Internet and doing things like "go outside" to avoid his wrath
On May 31 2011 05:25 Shikyo wrote: 200 gold + 1100 + 500 so the proc and movespeed cost 410 or so... I'd say it's pretty good value for money as you'll soon get NLR etc. which makes the proc significantly better
On May 31 2011 04:46 Iplaythings wrote:
On May 31 2011 02:15 Shikyo wrote:
On May 31 2011 01:25 Iplaythings wrote: Hey ! triforce is good on gangplank man.
It's based around 1. movespeed and 2. decent damage for Q while it being the only dmg item you get, along with Shurelyas, E, and FoN you're super fast.
You actually have ~4s cd 300 dmg Qs on champions after you get a sheen and can somewhat outharrass plenty of them.
Also randomkorean do you do anything but troll?
0123456789 I used to spam screenshots but people said that's annoying, are you serious? Of course I can start spamming them again if you want me to.
I wasnt ironic. Edit: ah w/e screenies doesnt work. Look at my match history if you want proof that I use it anyways.. if these screenies matter at all in this case let me say something else: Triforce is fucking baws on GP, for the love of god get it.
I know, I was supporting what you said kinda... I was arguing against the randomtrollrean post
@above: Cos Gangplank moves quicker and isn't purely melee and is a lane dominator unlike Nasus who just tries to stay alive in lane whereas gangplank can farm faster than anyone. Also completely disagree about triforce being better for Nasus at least for the reasons you gave.
But umm thanks, I'm gonna try that o.O Though I prefer only 4 gold per items so I get sheen
always out dps poppy and vlad every time no boots required
Man why couldnt u carry me this hard when I was feeding on gingerbrown.. I've been avoiding the Internet and doing things like "go outside" to avoid his wrath
does anyone have the math for the gold per 5 items? I'm looking but I can't seem to find it. I'm too lazy to do the real math and was wondering how long it takes for a philosopher's stone to become profitable.
On May 31 2011 10:49 Arthemesia wrote: does anyone have the math for the gold per 5 items? I'm looking but I can't seem to find it. I'm too lazy to do the real math and was wondering how long it takes for a philosopher's stone to become profitable.
I don't think that's what he means, philo stone costs 800 and you get 440 when you sell it so you need to make 360 gold, as you get 1 gold per 2 seconds it takes 720 seconds or 12 minutes.
EDIT: Maybe he meant it then o_o Though the wording of "for philo stone to become profitable" seemed strange if that was what he meant
On May 31 2011 10:49 Arthemesia wrote: does anyone have the math for the gold per 5 items? I'm looking but I can't seem to find it. I'm too lazy to do the real math and was wondering how long it takes for a philosopher's stone to become profitable.
edit: to above yea I was looking for the exact numbers as far as time goes but that thread has the answers I needed. Thanks though for the 12 minute time for being profitable.
On May 31 2011 10:49 Arthemesia wrote: does anyone have the math for the gold per 5 items? I'm looking but I can't seem to find it. I'm too lazy to do the real math and was wondering how long it takes for a philosopher's stone to become profitable.
On May 31 2011 06:52 [Agony]x90 wrote: I wanted to make a new thread about this, but unfortunately I don't have permission to, so i'll just post it here. It appears, that very much like the CSL, someone is trying to start a college league for league of legends. Since many of the people who surf this site go to school, i would encourage people to take a look and consider joining. I think this would be a great idea and a lot of fun for people who normally just play casual games or troll games. It doesn't cost anything and just requires so much time (i'd imagine) per week. However, since i'm not affiliated with the person starting this up, I don't have much of a clue as to what will happen, but I'm sure the person will clarify with time.
On May 31 2011 07:32 Seiuchi wrote: Don't worry, Morello's gonna use the qualifiers + Dreamhack as an opportunity to castrate Vlad like he's always wanted to do. Too busy Gangplanking him to worry about Swain.
TBH, this is one part of Riot's nerf attitude I dislike--they nerf too fast sometimes when something looks strong. They don't give people enough time to learn how to play against something, and when people DO figure it out, it coincides with some of the nerfs, so the champion ends up underpowered. This has happened with several champions, as well as some item changes (like the IE/LW changes--people were already transitioning onto strong beefy guys in lane to play against ranged carries, so the nerfs just went over the top).
You don't get enough people who go "oh hmm, that was strong--we should play around with it and refine playing with/against it" because Riot nips it at the bud at the next patch release.
Well, in Vlad's case you can argue they haven't nerfed too fast. It's really just that Vlad's design is somewhat screwy in the fact that nerfing things that aren't Q doesn't significantly change him, and nerfing Q significantly will just completely break him as a character. They've said several times that the reason they haven't nerfed him that hard is that Morello has a significant vendetta against his design, and I imagine a sidenote to that is that when they do finally put the hammer on Q they're going to have to completely remake him, and not one of those quickie ones like Morde's.
For Vladimir, his "gate" is his health. His spell usage mechanic is supposed to be like a sink. You pour hp in with Regen and Q, you lose it from using your other spells. This in-out mechanism is supposed to prevent him from just mindlessly spamming skills and having that 100% do-lots-of-damage-uptime with enough CDR. The problem though is that thanks to things like Spellvamp (and to a lesser extent, hp regen) this sink relationship doesn't work properly. When you heal for almost as much as it costs to cast a spell, then there's no thinking involved and you just hit buttons for free damage.
Increasing costs of casting his spells just hurts him even more earlygame before he itemises. Changing spellvamp has repercussions for other champions that rely on it. Reducing his damage too much risks making him subpar compared to other AP Carries even if he can cast spells 24/7.
TL;DR Vlad's entire resource mechanic and the damage attached to it is fundamentally what makes him either very powerful or not powerful at all which makes him so troublesome to balance.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me (having both played him and played against him) that the health cost of Vlad's spells is almost entirely negligible. Sure, you may hesitate to spam tides of blood during the early laning phase, but you don't really want to do that anyway because you'll push your lane. By level 9, you won't give a shit about the health cost because how low the cooll down is on your Q. As for hemoplague, big deal, the cost is relatively small and really worth it for what you get. As for his pool, Vlad sacrifices 20% of his current HP to escape what is often sure death. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Even so, the health mechanic isn't what makes Vlad frustrating. It's his pool that makes him a gigantic pain in the ass because he becomes unhittable. It's particularly stupid towards the end of teamfights when he pools and GAIN health from spell vamp, while hurting you, only to pop up and transfuse for the kill.
On May 31 2011 10:49 Arthemesia wrote: does anyone have the math for the gold per 5 items? I'm looking but I can't seem to find it. I'm too lazy to do the real math and was wondering how long it takes for a philosopher's stone to become profitable.
EPT
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