Damn I was telling people that Alistar should be the support hero now but now as a duo laner support he might actually die even with ult considering he won't have much items and will be underleveled.
His kit is still great, however. But you might think a little more about tower diving if you want to live through it prior to level 3 ult.
On August 24 2011 16:51 arnath wrote: Yeah my immediate reaction on seeing the Soraka changes is that solo mid AP Soraka might actually be really strong. Max level Starcall is like a 180 damage AOE nuke with a 0.4 AP ratio that only costs 55 mana. Plus it's on a ludicrously short cooldown, they increased the range, and it shreds MR.
Having 330 range on your main nuke is just asking to get blown up at the beginning of every fight.
Veigar needs so many things. He needs mana/regen to farm with Q and occasionally try something with E. Needs HP/regen so he doesn't die/zoned in lane while trying to farm Q up.
I actually tried to run flat HP regen quints/mpen/flat mana regen/flat mana regen opening to beef up his early game as much as possible. But then I sucked with him so I couldn't tell if it was working.
I think the most important thing about Veigar is learning how to land his stun. With everyone running Flash if you don't hit the stun... well you'll get flamed (and righteously so).
there's really nothing I hate playing against right now so I think the balance is ok...
but seriously I hate the direction riot is going so I think I will take a break for a while to play wc3 dota or something.
In my opinion the fundamental problem Riot needs to address is the decided lack of real initiation that causes every normal I play that makes it to late game to be a giant clusterfuck of idiots who simply don't know what to do in order to fight another team on a turret or even just in the middle of space when both teams have decent positioning.
I understand that my teammates being really stupid and getting themselves killed in lane is part of the game because normals tend to attract kids with elo >=300 lower than mine to my team but I feel like actually ever attacking a team in this game is unintuitive and generally too ineffective.
Kids run away with Baron, kids run 4v5, and kids run when they have a small advantage because it's just too hard to initiate without a level of teamwork that is frankly unrealistic to expect from 5 randies put together. Especially 5 bad randies.
This problem is not one I ever remember from DotA nor do I see it now that I go back and play it again occasionally and I'd at least like Riot to make an attempt at it instead of nerfing everything good.
They nerfed her healing which is her only good laning skill before ulti so now she can't lane for beans vs any of the popular sustain bruisers.
Pounce was also straight up nerfed until you get 25% CDR... so you more or less need to hog blue buff to have pounce where it was before or to have hope of having mana for your heal.
To give you an idea, buying DR+WOTA and throwing max range max skill spears at level 9 is now just as mana efficient (2.1 hp/mana) for healing as buying DR+NLR + BW and healing yourself with max E (also 2.1). The heal does scale better for healing but at least with WotA you can also heal yourself for free with cougar form...
(also if you only put one level in E then, surprise surprise, with DR+WOTA your healing efficiency is again at 2.1 hp/mana)
On August 24 2011 20:22 red_b wrote: Kids run away with Baron, kids run 4v5, and kids run when they have a small advantage because it's just too hard to initiate without a level of teamwork that is frankly unrealistic to expect from 5 randies put together. Especially 5 bad randies.
This problem is not one I ever remember from DotA nor do I see it now that I go back and play it again occasionally and I'd at least like Riot to make an attempt at it instead of nerfing everything good.
Still love you guys.
Yeah the lack of good ways to initiate is really frustrating and the effect is further compounded lategame where having a bad initiation and losing a team fight will lose you the game.
I'm honestly surprised that Riot hasn't been spitting out initiators and support champions because they seem to be really lacking in both those areas. Especially when you think they could probably come up with more unique abilities for these roles. There are quite a few tanks already but most of them are good primarily for reasons other than their initiation, even if they can initiate (cho, singed etc...).
It's actually amazing to me how many people get initiated on in this game...I can actually see how in low elo initiators probably don't matter at all because smurfing in 1600/1700s you can guarentee a squishy will get initiated on by a Brand stun or something.
edit: Also surprised there was no Brand nerf...clearly a tier above the other AP's now.
On August 24 2011 19:41 locodoco wrote: can any1 link me the vid where crs played clg and jacky played veigar? tyvm ily5ever(5ever is even longer than 4ever)
On August 24 2011 20:59 Bulldozer wrote: orianna, anivia, brand, annie are top of their class IMO
I really don't see how Annie could possibly keep up against a brand or an Orianna. Only reason Annie sees any play is because Brand and Orianna get banned so often.
They nerfed her healing which is her only good laning skill before ulti so now she can't lane for beans vs any of the popular sustain bruisers.
Pounce was also straight up nerfed until you get 25% CDR... so you more or less need to hog blue buff to have pounce where it was before or to have hope of having mana for your heal.
To give you an idea, buying DR+WOTA and throwing max range max skill spears at level 9 is now just as mana efficient (2.1 hp/mana) for healing as buying DR+NLR + BW and healing yourself with max E (also 2.1). The heal does scale better for healing but at least with WotA you can also heal yourself for free with cougar form...
(also if you only put one level in E then, surprise surprise, with DR+WOTA your healing efficiency is again at 2.1 hp/mana)
All the other high sustain champs are getting nerfed too. So what if Nidalee doesn't have a godmode laning phase? Those new Spears and the recent buff(bugfix) to Traps make her really strong mid/lategame.
They nerfed her healing which is her only good laning skill before ulti so now she can't lane for beans vs any of the popular sustain bruisers.
Pounce was also straight up nerfed until you get 25% CDR... so you more or less need to hog blue buff to have pounce where it was before or to have hope of having mana for your heal.
To give you an idea, buying DR+WOTA and throwing max range max skill spears at level 9 is now just as mana efficient (2.1 hp/mana) for healing as buying DR+NLR + BW and healing yourself with max E (also 2.1). The heal does scale better for healing but at least with WotA you can also heal yourself for free with cougar form...
(also if you only put one level in E then, surprise surprise, with DR+WOTA your healing efficiency is again at 2.1 hp/mana)
All the other high sustain champs are getting nerfed too. So what if Nidalee doesn't have a godmode laning phase? Those new Spears and the recent buff(bugfix) to Traps make her really strong mid/lategame.
Noone of that matters.
You can still go top, you can still punish without end and you can still never be ganked.
Nidalee just goes top and push till the inhib is down, and she can still do that. Perhaps even better now that the leap is going to be subject to CD reduction.
On August 24 2011 20:59 Bulldozer wrote: orianna, anivia, brand, annie are top of their class IMO
I really don't see how Annie could possibly keep up against a brand or an Orianna. Only reason Annie sees any play is because Brand and Orianna get banned so often.
Same damage, half the range.
Brand has straight up worse ratios and utility than Orianna or Annie. He gets a lot out of being able to dominate many mid matchups, but Ori and Annie beat him out a fair bit on lategame utility.
Also, people are forgetting about Zilean as a candidate for top-dog AP carry. He made a strong showing at Gamescom, and given how many melee DPS champs got buffed last patch (e.g. Garen, Pantheon, Nasus), the number of champs that synergize well with him has grown significantly.
On August 24 2011 20:59 Bulldozer wrote: orianna, anivia, brand, annie are top of their class IMO
I really don't see how Annie could possibly keep up against a brand or an Orianna. Only reason Annie sees any play is because Brand and Orianna get banned so often.
Same damage, half the range.
Brand has straight up worse ratios and utility than Orianna or Annie. He gets a lot out of being able to dominate many mid matchups, but Ori and Annie beat him out a fair bit on lategame utility.
Also, people are forgetting about Zilean as a candidate for top-dog AP carry. He made a strong showing at Gamescom, and given how many melee DPS champs got buffed last patch (e.g. Garen, Pantheon, Nasus), the number of champs that synergize well with him has grown significantly.
I have heard a lot of thing said about Brand but bad damage isn't one of them.
His ratio's are a tad lower because he has 4 damage skills (3 of wich are AoE).
Most of the AP mids don't actually have 4 damage skills.
That said, top of my head, i don't recall his ratios being any worse then Annie.
EPT
